


Space Cowboy

by DaughterofElros



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Anal Sex, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Divergence, Communication, Discussions of PTSD, Discussions of Past Trauma, Grilled Cheese, M/M, Oral Sex, Relationship Negotiation, Shower Sex, barrier use negotiation, discussion of past relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:34:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23076343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterofElros/pseuds/DaughterofElros
Summary: Alex should get home before the storm comes. That's what he says he's going to do. And then a stupid song on the radio throws a wrench into those plans by wrenching his heart.
Relationships: Michael Guerin & Alex Manes, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 84
Kudos: 228





	1. Space Cowboy

**Author's Note:**

> Slight fuckery with the canonical timeline here, makes it a bit of an AU timeline. This picks up after Michael shows Alex the bunker. We just have to imagine the snowstorm in 1x10 happens overnight, and the events of the hospital/Alex talking to Maria/ Deciphering the letters with Kyle will occur the next day, after the snow has fallen.

  
Alex’s thoughts are racing as he drives. Driving usually clears his head, gives him time to process his thoughts, center himself in a way that sitting in one place doesn’t. He wants to drive aimlessly, but he shouldn’t. He should swing into town, pick up staples to make it through the coming storm. The cabin is well-stocked, but there are a few fresh things it would be good to have- bread, eggs, juice, maybe some produce. He can probably use more coffee too. 

Mundane details he can focus on instead of the big, impossible thing his brain is sending blaring alarm signals through his thoughts about:

Michael wants to leave.

Not just Roswell, Not even New Mexico. Michael wants to leave earth.

Alex gets it, in a sense. He left Roswell, left New Mexico, left the fucking country. He left, taking the risk he might never come back, and he can acknowledge now that he hurt Michael when he did.

But Michael is aiming somewhere out of the fucking solar system. And if he does, he’s not just going to come back at the end of a tour of duty. What hurts even more is that he’s not just considering it, he’s actively working at this as his goal.

Alex is fucking terrified, because people might not accept it, but Michael Guerin is very goal oriented. Anyone who’s had Michael Guerin flirt with them would understand on a purely visceral level. To so many people in this town, Michael Guerin is the town fuck-up who’s making it by, a cautionary tale of squandering one’s potential. Turning down a full ride to UNM, lacking the ambition to leave town, scraping by in a trailer in a junkyard at the edge of the desert, no prospects and a criminal record. 

They don’t understand the kind of resilience it takes to make those grades he used to get, hit those test scores when you caught two hours of sleep shivering in a sleeping bag in your truck, won’t eat until lunch at school today and you haven’t eaten since lunch the day before. Alex sure hadn’t realized. People don’t recognize how dedicated to your goals you have to be to shut down your dreams, sacrifice the future you had earned, and make it seem natural, entirely because you’ve committed to a goal that requires that sacrifice. They don’t have any concept of what it must be like to have people assume you’re stupid when you’re probably the smartest person in the room… and to commit to letting them think that. They couldn’t possibly understand how difficult it is to keep believing in your own self-worth when the world is tearing you down and kicking you while you’re there, and you’ve had to let them think that so you can protect someone else. But Michael Guerin has lived all of that. And he’s building a spaceship in a bunker under his trailer. Because he’s honestly capable of it.

See, that’s the thing. Alex isn’t just hurt that Michael wants to leave the planet. He’s terrified that he might be able to- because if anyone can build a spaceship in his basement fallout shelter, it would be Michael Guerin. Alex doesn’t doubt that he can get to that point. He has to hope that Michael decides not to leave when he does.

  
Alex has a strong urge to hit something.

  
He resists that urge, pulls into the grocery store parking lot, and manages to navigate the grocery store itself, which is packed and chaotic before the storm, and feels almost as stressful to be in as some of the only-moderately-routine missions he’s been assigned to overseas.

He slides back into the driver’s seat an hour later with a paper bag full of groceries in the back seat, the beginning twinges of a headache that he pops some ibuprofen for, and no less of a feeling of anguish in his chest.

  
Part of him wants to drive back to the trailer, knock on the door, and beg Michael not to leave Roswell. Not to leave him. Like they even have anything official that Michael could be leaving. 

He forces himself to turn the other direction, start driving back to the cabin.

He flicks the radio on to distract himself on the drive, letting it scan for a station, and hears the the DJ’s voice, warm and exuberant over the airwaves. “This is Lincoln Logan coming at you live here on WRNM- with a special request from a gal named Ariana.” 

He’s about to flip to a different station because he’s not really in the mood for country- he’s less pretentious than he was as a teenager, has a lot of buddies that like country and can get him to sing along, but he’s not exactly an unabashed fan of the genre- when the alliteratively-named Lincoln Logan continues, “So let’s all listen in with her to “Space Cowboy” by Kasey Musgraves.

He drops his hand from the dash. With a title like that…he has to listen for at least a few seconds. There’s no way that a song that’s ostensibly about an alien cowboy could actually have anything meaningful to say about Michael Guerin, actual cowboy with bullshit macho swagger who is an actual alien from outer space and the sole resident of the entirety of the romantic real estate available in Alex’s heart.

…Right?

  
It starts out nice enough, simple and mournful and a little haunting, more vocals than instrumentation- though it’s pretty clear early on that there are probably no aliens in this song.

The line about saying you don’t know is like saying the sky isn’t blue resonates a bit with how things are with Guerin, and they way they’ve known that they have this epic, cosmic love that they’ve never been able to define or figure out.

As she sings “boots weren’t made…for sitting by the door…” He thinks about Guerin’s boots— dusty and worn, possibly the only pair of shoes he has these days, since Alex has never seen him wearing anything else. They’re patched and scuffed and battered and they’re definitely not the kind of boots that sit on a shelf to look fancy. They’re boots for working, boots for walking… “and you don’t wanna stay anymore.” Boots for leaving.

He gasps out a sob, surprised at how quickly the grief breaks over him, his eyes prickling.

Michael wants to leave.

He steers himself shakily to the shoulder, brings the SUV to a halt while Kacey Musgraves keeps on singing about how her cowboy can have his space if he wants it so much, that she won’t stand in his way, won’t fence him in. He sits in the rapidly-fading afternoon light and listens to the lines “I know my place, and it ain't with you…Well, sunsets fade, and love does too” and then “there ain't room for both of us in this town” and cries painful, quiet, cathartic tears. His love hasn’t faded though. It twists him up as much as ever, but he’s having to accept that Michael maybe doesn’t still feel that same way. That maybe this river is too wide to cross.

It’s salt in the metaphorical wound when she sings about driving away in a Silverado, because Alex knows that Michael has nuanced insights and opinions about his truck, and trim styles, and honestly Alex can’t remember all the details because ten years ago when they sat in the bed of Michael’s pickup truck out in the desert and played guitar, and Michael was talking about that stuff, Alex was focused so much on the shape of his lips and trying not to sport a visible erection that he didn’t commit the details of the conversation to memory. 

He doesn’t want to fence Michael in, of course. He just…wants them to choose to be in the same pasture— which is admittedly ironic given that he’s the one who left in the first place, and it’s unfair of him to come back, ready to move forward and expect Michael to be ready to be there too— or even want to move in the same direction. 

And now, forget same pasture, Michael doesn’t even want to be on the same planet.

Fences isn’t an appropriate metaphor at this scale.

It’s not like he wants to control Michael. He never wants Michael to feel like he doesn’t have choices and options and support. It’s why he left, instead of blurting out his dismay. In some ways, it’s part of why he left a decade ago. He can’t stomach the idea of being one of the people who holds Michael back, who doesn’t even try to understand him, who doesn’t believe in him. 

What he wants now is for them to face things side by side, stand united. He wants Michael to know that. And even though he can’t control it, he wishes Michael would want the same thing. It’s not even that he needs Michael to stay— Alex would follow him anywhere on earth he wanted to go. He just wants Michael not to want to leave him, not to want to put a galaxy or three between them. And he wants him to believe that there’s a place where they both belong.

He shuts the radio off before the song finishes fading out, slumps against the seat and feels all of it crashing into him. Hopes that no one comes along in the next few minutes to check on why he’s here, crying on the shoulder of the road. 

The grief begins to ebb, but he doesn’t feel hollowed out and scoured clean the way he usually does when he gets to the point of crying. This was…something, but it wasn’t quite cathartic. Instead, it’s a little bit like… clarity. Maybe determination. There’s something burning in his chest like a banked ember, and for the second time that day he makes a defiant decision that feels right down to his bones. 

He reaches into the glove box for some napkins that are stashed there so he can wipe his eyes, blow his nose. He unscrews the cap of the metal water bottle he keeps in the cupholder and takes a careful swig, then a few more, checking in the rearview mirror as he finds his calmness again and the blotchiness fades from his complexion. Then he puts the SUV in gear, pulls back onto the road and immediately swings into a u-turn. He leaves the radio off.

When he pulls into the junkyard, it takes him a moment to spot Michael, crouched near a tire of an old Dodge over by the overhang. It’s getting cold, so he’s got his jacket over the threadbare sweatshirt while he works. He stands up at Alex pulls to a stop, sets aside the wrench he’s holding and brushes his hands off the seat of his pants.

“Thought you wanted to get home before the snow.” He calls as Alex steps out of the SUV, checking to make sure his footing is stable, fingertips on the car’s doorframe in case he ends up needing the balance. The wind has picked up and is ruffling Michael’s hair, making some of the curls flutter around his face and glint in the last rays of the fading sun that’s being piled over by storm clouds.

“Yeah. I did. Stopped to grab groceries, but…” He walks over to Michael. “I had to come back and tell you something.”

“What?” Michael doesn’t looked particularly impressed.

“I don’t want you to go.”

Michael glances around confused and slightly irritated.

“Go where?”

“What you showed me, in the bunker. The console. I don’t want you to go if you fix it. When you fix it.” 

Michael looks at him, incredulous.

“When I…” he throws his arms out. “Are you for real, Alex? When I complete the impossible task of repairing the console of the ship that crash-landed and made me an involuntary resident of this world, you don’t want me to then build an actual spaceship that it could pilot, in order to go and find the people who made me, the society I’m from? That’s really rich, coming from the guy who ran away to join the military for a decade.” He’s half-shouting by the end.

“I know it’s hypocritical,” Alex bites out. “Which is why I didn’t say it an hour and a half ago.”

“Did our personal history suddenly change in the last hour and a half?” Michael crosses his arms, regards him with an expression cold enough it makes the wind on Alex’s face seem warm in comparison.

“No, that’s not… I can’t change the past, Guerin,” Alex fumbles to explain. “But maybe I want to build a better future.” He shakes his head, trying to walk back from this getting heated. “And you know what? Whatever society you started out in, the one you don’t remember… they might be the reason that you’re alive, but they didn’t build you. You built yourself. You survived, You grew up to be an amazing person, You are the architect of your own life. Not some alien society you have no memories of!”

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best deescalation tactic.

“I built myself, huh?” Michael thrusts his hand up, the back of it facing out so Alex can see the gnarled, twisting scars and badly-healed bones. “Kinda feels like other people are wielding the tools and not exactly following any plans I draw up.”

It’s a low blow, and Alex feels it like a sucker-punch in his gut. The memory of the hammer, his father’s fist clenched around the handle, crashing down on Michael’s hand while he’d stood by begging and screaming, the memory of Michael’s cries, the way he’d collapsed on the ground and then scrambled for the door, the way his father had looked at him and left Alex terrified that he would murder his own son…and it had only half mattered because he felt like he’d just died anyway. 

He doesn’t let himself think about what had come after, skips right over that darkness to the memories of crying silently in his bedroom all night, of bracing against the pain and sneaking out around dawn so he could collect Michael’s belongings the next day, stashing them in the basement underneath his father’s hunting equipment before creeping back to his room less than 20 minutes before he heard his Dad moving around. By the time he’d been told to come out for breakfast a couple hours later, there was a package for a heavy-duty combination padlock in the trash that his Dad ordered him take out without even looking up from his newspaper. When he opened the can in the garage, the crumpled halves of his ripped band posters stared back at him, the scent of chlorine from the rags beneath them tickling his nose. He never went back to the shed. 

He doesn’t even know what to say, can’t keep the anguish off his face. He sees the moment when Michael regrets it, his own expression crumpling, anger leaking away into horror and despair.

“I’m sorry,” Alex whispers, voice strangled. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Michael whispers raggedly, closing the distance and tentatively reaching for the lapel of Alex’s jacket. Alex wraps his hand around Michael’s wrist instinctively, holds him closer. He thinks maybe they both need an anchor to cling to keep from getting swept away right now. “God, Alex,” Michael breathes. “I never meant to let you think that I blame you for this. It was your father. I know that.” He licks his lips nervously, voice going low and sorrowful and tender. “I remember, you… you stepped in front of him. You tried to protect me. I remember feeling so fucking cared for in that moment, because you protected me. Pretty much nobody ever did that, before. Except maybe Max and Isobel a little bit. But nobody else, and never like that. And then I was so fucking terrified because of the way he was threatening you, and I couldn’t take it, I had to do something. I wanted to protect you the way your protected me. So I charged him, and it was stupid, and it let him get his hit in on me, but…it’s what I did.”

Alex draws in a shaky breath. He hates thinking about this, hates revisiting this. Sometimes he thinks he’ll only be able to keep moving on with his life if he compartmentalizes it and doesn’t let these memories out. But his therapist has suggested that that might not be the most effective way to cope long-term, and she’s been right on a lot of other things with PTSD, so he’s been working on this too. He feels the words welling up inside him, needing to be said.

“That was the first time in literally years that anyone tried to help me,” he tells Michael. Fighting to keep his voice steady. “No one saw what was going on. No one recognized it. Kyle’s dad, maybe…but I was so ashamed that I didn’t want to let on to anyone what it was like. Even with Liz and Maria…I mostly pretended that it was just arguments and yelling and that it sucked, and it was fine. Like the emotional abuse was any more okay than the physical stuff.” He grimaces, takes a couple of steadying breaths so he can keep going.

“I was so ashamed when my Dad hurt you. I was ashamed that I’d brought you into that, put you in danger, told you you were safe when I was clearly lying to both of us… And I hated myself for being the reason why you were hurt. I felt so guilty for being the reason you got hurt, because I felt like I was worthless, and you shouldn’t have been hurt like that at all, ever…but for it to be because of me, when on my worst days I felt like I was worth nothing to society, and my father kept reinforcing that? I couldn’t stand it.” His words are getting away from him, and he has to stop talking.

“Alex, Alex, no…” Michael croons, bringing his scarred hand up to cradle the back of Alex’s neck, eyes bright with unshed tears. “You are worth everything. The moon and stars and everything in this world. I was the one who wasn’t worth anything, and you were so bright and perfect and made me feel like I could be somebody.” He’s pleading for Alex to understand, and Alex feels tears welling up, threating to spill over his lashes for a second time today.

“That’s the thing, Guerin,” He says roughly. “Neither one of us is worthless. We never were, they just made us feel like it. And what he did to us both, what society in general wants to do to two queer kids feeling some of their first moments of acceptance for who they are is fucked up. Everything you just said about me being worth everything, that’s exactly the way I felt about you. Exactly the way I still feel.” He feels Michael tense up, try to draw away, but he keeps his grip on his wrist, shifts his weight so that they’re closer together, cups his own hand around the back of Michael’s neck to mirror their pose, fingers delving into his curls and as he tips their foreheads together.” You are worth it, Guerin. And I don’t want to walk away from you. I don’t want you fly away from me. I don’t think you do either, not deep down. And what you said down there in the bunker? I don’t think you want to give me the power to destroy you. I think you want to trust me not to. So don’t push me away.”

Michael shudders against him.

“I don’t… Know what to say about any of this. Except that the last thing I want is to watch you walk away.” He laughs shakily. “And I want to kiss you right now, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Because every time we kiss these days, we don’t talk?” Alex suggests dryly. He massages the back of Michael’s neck slightly, subtly trying to ease some of the tension he carries there, and is rewarded with a pleased hitch in Michael’s breathing.

“That,” Michael agrees, “and because what we’re talking about…I don’t think I can switch back into a kissing mood that soon. Maybe…not today at all?” Michael bites his lip. It makes Alex’s heart skip a beat, but not in the way he’s gotten used to. This is more feeling overwhelmed by the tenderness of it than carnal desire. The rest of what Michael says makes him feel pretty damn hopeful as he goes, “But you were right earlier- we need to start talking again, because we barely even talked before, and neither of us are the people we were ten years ago.”

Michael steps back, drops his hand to wipe away some dampness from his eyes and sniffs.

“Did you buy any bread while you were at the store? Because… the snow might not start for awhile yet, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got some kraft singles in the fridge inside. I can make us grilled cheese if you want, maybe we take a few minutes to do some of this talking?”

“I bought bread,” Alex tells him, letting his hand skim down Michael’s arm to squeeze his hand before dropping away. “Grilled cheese sounds good.” It’s gotten dark enough that the lights have come on in the auto yard. Alex goes to the car to grab the grocery bag. 

Michael waits for him at the door of the trailer.


	2. My Heart Is Not Much For Collateral, Tattered and Battle-Scarred

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Grilled Cheese is made, and some communication is done

Inside the airstream, Michael shucks off his coat and tosses it on the chair beside the door already piled with things, leaving Alex to follow suit. There’s not really a place to sit, other than the bed, so that’s where Alex ends up perching. Michael sets the groceries on the counter, ducks his head into the refrigerator and emerges with a half pack of cheese singles, mayonnaise, and two beers. He cracks the cap of each bottle, then starts putting together his implements, using the stove burners to stage some of the production before he turns them on, pulling his sleeves up a few inches to keep them out of the way.

“You, uh…use mayonnaise instead of butter.” He says awkwardly. “Works just as good, maybe even better, and you don’t have to wait for butter to soften up,” he says as he gets out a pan and a spatula.

“I… never knew that,” Alex says truthfully.

“You have to do much cooking in the air force?” Michael ventures. The conversation is stilted and weird, but it feels like something they have to just… get through to be able to talk about things that are real, but not viscerally traumatic.

“Not really,” Alex admits. “But I would sometimes choose to because I like it. I like how there’s a bunch of ways to put ingredients together and make them taste good, but also if you know the process of what you’re doing, it’s comfortable. It’s…relaxing sometimes.” He shrugs. “I cook at the cabin more, now that I’m on my own. Less fun when you’re cooking for survival, but it’s okay.”

“Cabin?” Michael asks. And wow, they really haven’t talked, have they? They’re going to keep running up against awkwardness and pain for awhile.

“Yeah, um…” He set the beer on the nearest available surface (the floor) and slides his hands up and down his thighs. “When I came back from Iraq, I found out that Sheriff Valenti left me the old hunting cabin that he and my Dad used to take us- my brothers and Kyle and me— to when we were kids. Deed and keys and all in this manila envelope. I’ve been living there ever since.” 

He watches Michael setting out bread and unwrapping cheese slices. “I mean, it’s not like I’m ever going back to the house I grew up in. At least the cabin doesn’t have that many memories, and the ones it does have are more about hanging out with Kyle and his dad than the people I’m related to.” He shrugs, picking at a pill of cotton on the worn gray flannel pillowcase on the pillow beside him. 

“It’s not like there aren’t any bad memories, but… I don’t want to avoid anything just because it has pain and bad memories attached. I’d rather take the stuff that has good memories and try to brush away the bad ones, build new over them.” 

There’s a tiny mostly-healed scab on the back of his hand- he can’t even remember from what. He scrapes off another pill from the pillowcase so he doesn’t pick at it. “I genuinely said that about the cabin,” he offers, “But honestly, it works as a metaphor for us too.”

“Build new memories, not give the old ones so much power?” Michael summarizes.

“The bad ones at least,” Alex agrees. “I want to keep the good ones.” He bites his lip, wondering if he should say the next thing that comes to his mind, or if it’s too honest. “I spent a lot of time wondering what I’d trade away in order to not have had my Dad walk in that afternoon, not to have had him find us, for him not to have injured you.” He swallows, looking up at the broad expanse of Michael’s shoulders in the threadbare sweatshirt. “I told myself I should be willing to trade anything so you weren’t hurt, even the memory of kissing you, of our first time together. But I could never convince myself I would make that trade, and I felt so shitty about it.”

“Don’t feel shitty about it,” Michael tells him, picking up the spatula to flip the first sandwich in the pan. “I thought about it all the time. No matter how much pain I was in— physical or emotional, no matter how betrayed I felt when you left— I used to think about being with you that day. I’d just kind of…play it over and over again in my mind so I’d get to hold on to it, you know?”

“So did I.” He laughs fondly, “I even used to write you letters in my head, pretending that I was writing to you in a world where you didn’t hate me, weren’t justified in doing so. A world where you might actually read a letter I wrote to you.”

Michael checks the underside of the sandwich before glancing back at him.

“I didn’t hate you,” he corrects. “Was I angry? Yeah. For a long time. Which is super fun for a guy who can move things with his mind when he’s feeling ticked off.” He slides the sandwich out of the pan and onto a paper towel. “It was other stuff, mostly— almost entirely. But I was a little mad at you. A little hurt, too. I would have read the letters if you’d sent them to me though.”

“I never wrote them down. They were always just up in my head. I didn’t want to take the risk.”

“That your Dad would find out?”

“That anyone would.”

Michael shoots him an inquisitive look. “Wasn’t Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repealed pretty early on there?”

“A few years in,” Alex confirms. He gives an overly-bright smile. “But the prohibition against “Unnatural Carnal Copulation” in the UCMJ stayed in effect until the last days of 2014.”

“UCMJ?”

“Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. Basically, you could say you were queer, but still be brought up on charges if you admitted to fucking like you were. So I wasn’t exactly sending letters home to anyone. Except Maria, on occasion. Liz took off, I didn’t have her address, I didn’t know what to say to her anyway after what she went through. I hated my family. And you…I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me ever again.” 

“But you wrote them in your head?”

“Yeah. All the time for the first couple years. Less often as time went on. Both because it felt wrong to keep making up a version of you in my head like that, and because I stopped wanting to reflect on what I was doing over there.”

Michael stands with his hip propped against the wood slats of the cabinet, arms crossed over his chest. He’s kind of hugging his own elbow against his body, and he looks vulnerable in a way that always makes Alex want to touch him, reassure him.

“For what it’s worth?” He says quietly, lifting his eyes to Alex’s. “Adult me wishes I could read those letters. I’d fucking treasure them. But eighteen year old me? I want to think it would have been amazing to get them…But I was so fucked up about so many things. I don’t know if I would have read them, or thrown them away unopened because I was scared of what was in them, or locked them up in a box somewhere for the same reason. Everything went to shit so fast… I was scared to hope for anything for a long time. And it hurt when you left.” His jaw tightens for a second. “It felt like rejection.”

“It wasn’t,” Ales promises.

“It’s easy to say that. Easier to accept it now. But we were scared teenagers, and a lot of things went south real quick.” He turns back to the tiny stove, slides one sandwich out of the pan and starts another. “We’re not exactly equipped to handle it now, let alone back then.” For a few moments, the only sound is the hiss of the pan on the stove.

“Do you think we actually might be able to come out okay on the other side of this?” Alex asks, voicing his most important, most fragile hope. Michael’s answer is immediate, like he’s already thought about it too.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I know wanting isn’t enough. Otherwise, we’d be there already.” Michael checks the sandwich.

“It’s a start though,” Alex points out. The confirmation that Michael wants them to work out somehow roils in contrast to the dread he’s pretty sure they both feel that it won’t.

“It’s a start.” Michael’s nod of confirmation accompanying the words puts another feather on the hope side of the scale.  
  
“So is what we’re doing right now. Talking.”

“True. Maybe still not enough though.” Michael doesn’t look happy to be contradicting him, and that’s its own kind of hope also.

“Maybe not,” Alex allows. “But we’ve admitted that we’ve loved each other. We know that chemistry isn’t the issue.” He can still feel it, charging the air between them. The urge to touch Michael is like a magnetic pull, even now when they’ve taken kissing and sex off the table. “Maybe we just need to figure out if we like each other.”

“Liking you isn’t the problem,” Michael tells him with a sigh. “I think liking me might be. Me liking me, I mean.” That breaks Alex’s heart. Breaks it more because he sort of understands.

“I get that, I think. With myself, I mean.”

Michael snorts derisively. “What about you is there not to like?” He flips the second sandwich.

“You know,” Alex says, skirting around the question, “when you get really badly injured in combat, they make you go the therapy. OT, PT, prosthetists. For a while your life is pretty much just pain, exhaustion, appointments, and various therapies. And they add counseling in too, because there’s a lot going on on in your brain when you suddenly don’t have a limb anymore. And as it turns out, surprise surprise, a huge percentage of my trauma comes from way before I lost my leg. Before I even joined the military. There’s a lot of stuff I thought I didn’t like about myself, a lot of stuff I thought I wasn’t allowed to like” He picks the beer up again and takes a sip. “I’m still working on it.”

“You still see a therapist?” Michael asks, surprised.

“Yeah. She’s in San Antonio, so we do most of our sessions through secure video chat.”

“Why San Antonio?” Michael flips the sandwich back to toast the front side for a few more second and tears off a couple of paper towels, stacking them into plates.

“The VA,” Alex tells him. “Biggest inpatient medical facility in the DOD, also their only level one trauma center and burn facility in the US. It’s the happening place for amputees. The place is hoppin’.” He almost spits out his beer at the flash of amusement that starts to flicker across Michael’s lips that turns to abject horror as he processes the pun.

“Did you really just…”

“Yeah, I did,” he laughs. “You gotta be able to have a good sense of humor about the heavy stuff that can’t be ignored. I mean, don’t you and Max and Isobel ever joke about being from another planet?”

“Okay, yeah,” Michael admits. “You’re…okay with jokes about…”

“…being an amputee?” Alex raises his eyebrows, amused. “It’s the reality of my life. My leg was amputated below the knee, I use a prosthesis, I need crutches some of the time. Some jokes about it are okay, others aren’t. Like some jokes about me being gay are okay, especially if I’m the one making them about myself, and others are just insensitive.”

“Okay. Makes sense.” Michael accepts the explanation easily. “So If I think you’re wrong about something, and want to tell you that you don’t have a leg to stand on…”

“I’ll remind you that I’ve got at least one,” Alex smirks back, in character for the scenario. 

“Okay then.” Michael ducks his head, shaking it as he grins and sets the two sandwiches on each set of napkins, hands one to Alex with a flicker of a trepidation.

They’re objectively good— not just because Michael cooked for him, is feeding him- though that tickles at his brain in a good way too. The bread is golden brown, crispy, the cheese melty and rich and indulgent in his mouth. The salt and grease flood his senses, satisfying and delicious. He makes a little noise of appreciation in his throat, closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them, Michael is watching him intently.

“This is so good,” Alex tells him, because honestly, it is. He probably hasn’t had grilled cheese since he was a kid, maybe a teenager, and he has definitely been missing out.

“Yeah?” Michael asks, ducking his head shyly. He’s always had this cocky, macho swagger, but genuine compliments are things he tends to get a little bashful about. 

“Really good,” Alex reiterates. “I’d forgotten how good a grilled cheese can be, but I swear these are better than the ones my Mom used to make.”

“It’s the mayo trick,” Michael asserts, biting into his own, chewing with gusto now that he’s convinced that Alex likes this thing he made. Alex works very hard not to smile at how endearing he finds it. “So,” he starts out, pausing between bites. “San Antonio.”

“Mmm hmm,” Alex agrees, waits until he finishes chewing to answer. “That’s where I did most of my recovery, my rehab, by therapies and stuff. I mean, I was at Walter Reed in Maryland for a little while at first, but they transferred me to San Antonio pretty quick. I was there for… eleven and a half months.”

“Jesus, that’s a long time.” Michael looks surprised.

“Yeah. Plenty of it sucked, even though I knew I was getting the best possible treatment and medical advice for what I had going on. But I also know guys who have been there for two, close to three years. I know a few more who ended up relocating to San Antonio long term so it’s easy to keep going in for appointments even once you’re home. I thought about it, but…my Dad pulled some strings without my knowledge, got me assigned to duty here in Roswell. So I came home.”

“Would you have come back here without that?” Michael wonders.

“I don’t know.” Alex has to be honest about it. “Probably not right away? Definitely not if I thought I’d have to live under my father’s roof for a single second. I stayed in a motel for the first six days I got back here, refusing to step foot inside that house on principle. Jim Valenti’s letter was a godsend. I don’t know what I would have done without the cabin. Being anywhere around my father… it sets me back. Having to report to him on occasion was bad enough. Having to be around the house where he beat the shit out of me for years, where he tried to destroy everything good in my life? I would not have been okay.”

The silence starts to get heavy.

  
““The thing is,” Alex says after he swallows down the last bite of the sandwich, “I think I had to come back here to really understand what I needed, what I had lost. I had friends. I had people I loved. I had good memories. And I let myself run away from all of that, steer clear for an entire decade, because I didn’t want to be around my father, or around memories of him. It was just another way he was stealing my life away. Suffocating me. I hate how I feel when I’m around him. I hate who I become.” He reaches for his beer to take another swallow. “For example, that night at the Drive-In this summer, a few days after we first saw each other again? I was an ass. I treated you like crap.”

“You did.” Michael shrugs, taking a pull from his own beer, head tilting in a defiant arch. “Called me a criminal.”

Alex winces. “I’m so, sorry sorry for that. I can’t excuse it, but …My Dad was on my case that night. About you, and about other stuff too. But mostly you. I let him get in my head. Or more like he got in there anyway when I was trying not to let him. Everything he said, I kept trying not to hear, but I started falling into old traps, and I just… hadn’t figured out how to stand up to him. I got wrapped up in my own fear and issues, and everything I really wanted— to sit with you at a town event and let everyone there know I was there with you…it got lost in the wreckage. And I hurt you, that night. I don’t want to be that person. It’s…a big part of what I’ve been working on ever since.”

Michael shrugs.

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

“It was. I saw your face. I know that what I did hurt.”

“Not like it wasn’t true.” Michael shrugs with a nonchalance that Alex can tell is carefully feigned. “I have an arrest record- a pretty long one, actually. I am a criminal. Doesn’t matter why. I’m just another junkyard dog.” The way he drawls those last words… it gets Alex’s teeth on edge. Michael starts to turn away, but Alex grabs him.

“No,” Alex tells him desperately, shooting up to grab his arm and keep him from shutting down whatever fragile progress they’ve made. “Don’t believe that. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that- even if it’s me. Especially if it’s me.”

“So… Believe you, except…don’t? Right. Got it. Glad that’s all cleared up now.” Michael’s eyes glitter like whiskey in cut glass. His tone is sharp like a shattered decanter. Alex forces himself not to react destructively.

“Believe what I’m saying to you now— clear headed and with my heart opened up like a high school science experiment— is true. Most of the time, I feel like if I were to dissect my heart, I’d find its chambers full of ice water, packed with salt, blackened and charred like ash and charcoal. But it’s not. It’s not because there are times these days that I’m pretty happy again. When my heart feels like it’s working the way it’s supposed to. And then I’m around you, and it hurts, because it’s like my whole heart starts working again, not just pieces.”

“Like it’s trying to pump the poison out,” Michael says, and Alex is so relieved because he gets it. Michael understands.

“Yes. That’s it exactly. You remind me why I need to keep healing, keep pushing through the pain.”

MIcahel hardens his gaze, pulls back a little bit. 

“Yeah, well, good for you, Alex, but I can’t just be your mystical healing charm or whatever.”

“That’s not what- no.” Alex frowns at him. “Of course not. I have to be the one doing the work to heal myself. Obviously. And so do you, for your own self.”

“I’m fine.”

“Bullshit!” Alex exclaims, trying not to raise his voice, and mostly succeeding. “You have just as many battle scars— literally and figuratively— as I do! Neither one of us is fine, Guerin. That’s the whole point. And as long as we keep living in the pain, we’re going to keep being miserable. Alone, or together, we’ll be miserable. And forget what I said at the Wild Pony. I don’t want this to end— not with fireworks, and definitely not with a whimper.”

Michael looks at him with an infuriatingly calm mask across his features.

“So once again, forget what you said before, and listen to you this time.” They’re right back in it, Michael’s mouth flattened out to a straight line. “Just let me know, Alex, are we going to have having a conversation six weeks from now where you tell me to forget this conversation, and then maybe another one six weeks after that, where you’re telling me to forget the conversation that preceded that one?”

Alex can feel his irritation rising. He reins it in though, makes himself consider what’s behind Michael’s sarcastic words.

“You’re right.” Michael’s gaze sharpens at his acknowledgment. Alex pushes ahead while he’s got his attention. “I have messed up any number of times in the past. So have you-you’ve gotten your hits in on me too, and we probably have to spend time working through all of those instances of harm instead of just blaming each other. Or instead of blaming ourselves and just cycling through it all again and again. Ideally if we start doing that, we will end up in a different place than we are right now— as people, and maybe in our relationship, with what’s between us. Maybe we won’t be together. Maybe we’ll be friends, with options still open down the road. Maybe we’ll be in a place to make this cosmic draw between us actually work. Don’t you want something to change?”

Pain clouds Michael’s eyes and he whirls to turn away. The movement yanks his arm out of Alex’s grasp, throws him off balance, and he stumbles, catching himself with his hip on the counter. He almost falls back to the bed, arm failing behind himself for balance, which he regains pretty quickly. And then Michael is there by his side, all stricken expression and careful hands supporting him.

“Oh my God, Alex. I didn’t mean to… Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Alex assures him, waving off the concern. Michael is still apologizing though.

“Really, I wasn’t trying to… Alex, you’ve got to believe me. I would never-”

Alex breathes out a laugh. “It’s fine, Guerin. Really, truly fine. You didn’t do anything. My balance is pretty good, but it’s not perfect. I get a lot of little bruises these days from knocking into things, and it’s fine. The leg is good, I’m all good.” He shifts toward Michael a bit to demonstrate his stable footing and finds their lips mere inches apart. He catches his breath, but makes no move to shift away. One of Michael’s curls is close enough to brush his forehead. His fingers itch to clutch the fabric of Guerin’s sweatshirt. Neither one of them moves.

“I want to kiss you,” Michael confesses, his breath a whisper across Alex’s lips. 

“Me too. Pretty much all the time.” Alex bites his own lip, needing the sensation to keep him from pouncing on Michael. Kissing the hell out of him and blowing past every boundary they established earlier is an incredibly tempting option. One he’s resisting. “But we keep kissing instead of talking. And we had really good reasons for not going there this time. We should stick to them.”

“We should,” Michael agrees. But for a long moment, he still doesn’t move. “Why is it so hard to pull away?”

Alex reaches down, laces their fingers together slowly, hoping this is okay instead.

“Because we’ve been using sex as a crutch for emotional intimacy, and doing ourselves a disservice in the long run?” he rattles back rhetorically. Michael snorts and draws his head back, an impossibly fond grin spreading across his lips.

“That your therapist talking?” he asks. Alex feels himself grinning too.

“One hundred percent.”

“She sounds smart. And probably right.” He takes a long breath, looks down at their joined hands. “This is nice though.”

“This is good,” Alex agrees. “Does this… for you, does this feel like it’s easier? To try to talk about…things with us?”

“Touching like this?” Michael asks, swiping his thumb across the back of Alex’s hand. Alex nods. “Yeah, it really does. Does it feel that way for you too?” Alex nods and Michael nods back, affirming. They stand there for a few seconds, glancing away and then back again and nodding like bobbleheads. Michael gestures to the bed. “Do you think we could… sit down there? Maybe…keep talking? Or is it too…” He trails off. They both know what they’ve done in this exact bed.

“No, that’s good. That’s a good idea,” Alex rushes to affirm. They shuffle around so that Michael can rearrange the blankets one-handed, crawl in to the narrow bed, pressed up against the wall so that there’s room for Alex.

“It’s like… It feels better to talk when I’m touching you right now. Like my mind is less chaotic,” Michael says as he makes the adjustments. “It’s not normally like that for me.”

“Sometimes it’s a little bit like that with a couple of my friends,” Alex nods, reflecting. “Liz. Maria. Not many other people though. And not all the time.”

“How do you guys…How does it work with them?”

Alex finds himself grinning.

“They’re both huggers. In high school, we used to do our homework sitting on someone’s bed and just kind of end up sprawling out together. Maria used to always have cold feet, so she’d tuck her toes under my thigh if we were sitting on a couch together. Liz and I would trade back and forth for who got to use whose lap as a pillow. And they used to help me paint my nails.”

Michael releases his hand to run a thumb across his fingertips.

“I could learn that, I guess,” he jokes. “I’m a Jack-of-all trades kind of guy. Don’t see why cosmetology can’t be one of them.”

“Renaissance man.” Alex grins softly.

“What about these days?” Michael asks, hooking his fingertips under Alex’s, drawing him in. Alex snorts as he starts to sit.

“Last week, we got together to have a friends night. Liz pried herself away from work, Maria brought two bottles of wine, and we watched The Great British Bake-Off. By the second episode, both of them were curled up against my side on the couch,each of them leaning their heads against one of my shoulders. Liz actually fell asleep that way. It was good. I like to me touched if I’m expecting it.” He glances up at the window and has to change the subject.

  
“Look!” he observes, settling in next to Michael, lifting his prosthesis up so he can stretch his leg out without snagging anything, and dropping his shoulders so that he can fit under the arm Michael raises to drape across them. “It’s snowing.” Through the only window where the shades aren’t drawn or papered over with newspaper, they can see that the snow has started to fall, drifting down in massive flakes that have already begun to pile up on the metal and glass of the cars in the junkyard, and is even starting to stick on the ground.”

“It’s beautiful,” Michael says. He’s looking out the window when Alex glances at him, but he thinks that might not be the only level he means it on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from a lyric from Dessa's "Mineshaft II" that Alex near-quotes another line from in this chapter. It's continuing a theme of songs being quotes in these chapters. 
> 
> It's not a direct map onto the Malex relationship, but it is about going back to the child you used to be to forgive and find peace with the the greatest love of your life as you're trying to move on to something. It's written about someone she loved painfully and was in a Hip Hop Collective with for more than a decade, and this (as with all of her music) is well worth a listen. Lyrics and link to the song are below, but I'd like to highlight the fact that this lyric is one of the few song lyrics that still rolls me and makes me cry, years after first hearing it, because of the acknowledgement that while we might wish to not carry our scars, we likely wouldn't erase who we are to undo them-- we'll work to heal and build instead. That strikes me as a very Alex Manes thing, and a very Michael Guerin thing.
> 
> "Hoping we could trade, just for tonight  
> Like I could borrow your heart  
> And I could leave you mine  
> It's not much for collateral, tattered and battle-scared  
> But I can promise you solemn  
> That I will be back for it tomorrow"
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1piZb6715E0
> 
> Mineshaft II
> 
> Fifteen years from tonight you have to make a decision  
> The greatest love of your life  
> Is gonna call during dinner...  
> From the home of the girl that he's living with now  
> And the guilt he'll say is killing him  
> He's wilted in the middle and  
> He knows how bad he acted  
> Knows he can't have you back  
> But the fact is he can't be happy when you're angry  
> And you're so angry, he says you stayed so mad  
> And he heard it on the street that  
> You moved back in with your dad  
> You were drinking something awful  
> And that makes him sad  
> Then he says it's good to hear your voice again  
> And that it's hard to ask it,  
> But he's calling with a question  
> He's been working real hard, he's trying to make a new start  
> An honest to god fresh beginning  
> So maybe you could try to finally find it in your heart  
> To forgive him
> 
> You've already been here before  
> You already know where it goes  
> You chose this, you know it's suppose to be over  
> You've been here before  
> You already know where it goes  
> You chose this, you know it's suppose to be over
> 
> He hung up the phone, you listened to the dial tone  
> And you stared at the stove until the beeping started  
> You read some love letters some threats  
> And some you couldn't tell apart  
> That you keep under the bed at the apartment  
> And then you did what he asked you to do  
> You opened your heart up  
> Right there on a napkin on the carpet  
> And part of it was frostbit  
> But you've always been a smart kid  
> Could still distinguish, the blood black as pitch  
> Valves had gone stiff, veins and scar tissue  
> Four chambers just a standard issue  
> But none had room, forgiveness is huge  
> And you had two full of ice water  
> One full of salt, one packed with coal  
> Eager and ready and willing to find fault (to find fault, to find fault)
> 
> You've already been here before  
> You already know where it goes  
> You chose this, you know it's suppose to be over  
> You've been here before  
> You already know where it goes  
> You chose this, you know it's suppose to be over
> 
> Then with your heart in your lap  
> And your head in your hands, suddenly you had a plan  
> Wrap the mess in newspaper  
> Headed west on Hennepin,  
> Heavy with a huge favor for a kid that just turned ten  
> A flat-chested, gap-toothed girl  
> Was the best that I've been so far  
> And now I'm too big to forgive him  
> I need just a moment with me,  
> A moment when I was still little  
> I used to sing on the roof outside my windowsill  
> And I came hoping some ghost of me would be here still  
> And here you are, stick figure and a busted grin  
> Still ignorant of all the trouble I'ma get us in  
> Hoping we could trade, just for tonight  
> Like I could borrow your heart  
> And I could leave you mine  
> It's not much for collateral, tattered and battle-scared  
> But I can promise you solemn  
> That I will be back for it tomorrow  
> I only need yours this evening  
> So I can call an old friend  
> And I can tell him  
> That we're finally even,  
> That we're finally even
> 
> You chose this, you know it's suppose to be over  
> I've been here before  
> And I already know where it goes  
> You chose this, you know it's suppose to be over.


	3. Love's Not a Three-Way Street

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael and Alex talk... about themselves, about therapy, about love, about the past, and a little bit about the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 Title is from "Goodbye Love" from RENT.

“Look!” he observes, settling in next to Michael, lifting his prosthesis up so he can stretch his leg out without snagging anything, and dropping his shoulders so that he can fit under the arm Michael raises to drape across them. “It’s snowing.” Through the only window where the shades aren’t drawn or papered over with newspaper, they can see that the snow has started to fall, drifting down in massive flakes that have already begun to pile up on the metal and glass of the cars in the junkyard, and is even starting to stick on the ground.”

“It’s beautiful,” Michael says. He’s looking out the window when Alex glances at him, but he thinks that might not be the only level he means it on.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, watching the snow come down, drifting flakes illuminated by the the lights of the junkyard. The silence settles around them- Alex can actually hear the crystalline sound of the snow falling on the metal hull of the airstream. The cold is starting to creep in a little, but it’s warm, being tucked up against Michael’s side. All along his left side and across his shoulders, the heat of Michael’s body radiates into him, because Michael Guerin has always run hot. Aside from a slight discomfort in his right leg, he’s contented. It’s like the snow and the silence and the sensation of touch are a centering, grounding pull. Like being able to touch each other reduces some of the tension between them, the fear that the other person is going to be swept away by the currents of fate, or tides of their own making.

“So.” Michael says eventually, breaking the silence, “You think I should talk to someone. Professionally.”

“It helped me,” Alex says carefully. “It’s not like talking to a friend or a lover or a bartender, you know? You still need those people, but a therapist is something different. They’re someone you talk to about the things that are on your mind, or that are causing issues in your life, and they help you recognize what you can do about it— how you can shift what you’re doing, or thinking, or how you can…reorganize your thoughts. They help things make sense, help you see when your mind is taking you down a path that’s maybe not the healthiest or most logical- And they kind of…give you tools so you can navigate yourself back when it happens.”

Michael shifts uncomfortably.

“I don’t think most of the things in my life are things I can’t talk to a shrink about without getting put in a mandatory psych hold.”

“Yeah. I get that fear,” Alex concedes. “And I get why you’d be inclined to avoid hospitals and stuff at all costs. It doesn’t work like that. Unless you’re a danger to yourself or others, they can’t do anything like that.”

“I can throw furniture around with my brain,” Michael reminds him flatly. “I can kind of throw people around that way too. Sometimes that power goes off without meaning to, especially when I get upset. How does that not sound like I need a psych eval?”

“Maybe…don’t tell them you’re an alien?” Alex ventures. Michael snorts. And yeah, it does seem like a pretty important detail to leave out, but… “ I mean, maybe start with I feel like I don’t fit in sometimes instead of I’m an extraterrestrial being. Deeper truths and all that. And maybe…talking about the things you’ve had to deal with that someone who only knows about life on this planet would understand might…help. In ways you don’t even realize.”

“I only know about life on this planet.” Michael points out. “I know it has to exist on other planets because I exist… but I don’t have any memories or anything to fall back on. It’s just one big blank spot, like my memory never existed before that. Max, Isobel and I… we’re it. I don’t even know if we’re really siblings, or if we were just survivors thrown together at random.”

“Does it matter?” Alex asks. “I’m not trying to be glib, or flippant.” He turns his head so he can see Michael’s face a little better. “Just… you, more than most people I know, have a reason to believe that family is more than blood or paperwork.” He reaches over to take Michael’s left hand in his own, slots his fingers into the spaces between Michael’s. “My father isn’t someone I consider a parent. The people who were your foster parents weren’t ever real parents to you. But you have Isobel and Max. It sounds like you have them as family come hell or high water.”

“You’re not wrong,” Michael sighs. “But… It’s still different, because they had each other, every day, in the same house growing up. But I didn’t have anyone to turn to. I didn’t have anyone except myself most days. They had parents who loved them, who helped them survive. The only adults in my life were people that I had to struggle to survive living with. So it’s different now that we’re adults too. There’s an impossible closeness along with an odd distance. Sometimes I just…wish that I was somebody’s first priority- outside of themselves, at least. But then I think about it and…what do I have to offer anyone? I’m an alien. I live in a trailer that I keep parked in a junkyard. I have nothing to offer anybody.” He tilts his head back, stares up at the ceiling. 

“Honestly, I can barely make enough money to feed myself, keep propane in the generator, let alone provide for someone else. I can’t even afford to buy my friends a round of drinks— and it’s not like I have many friends.” He plucks at the pillowcase under his elbow. “Isobel bought me the sheets on this bed years and years ago. I don’t even know how much they cost, because she didn’t let me see, and my skin was already itching just from being in that home goods store to pick them out, accepting her charity.” He huffs out a frustrated breath. “Every nice thing in my closet, my sister gave me. Half of the t-shirts I own come from a pack that Max dropped off here saying that he bought the wrong size and couldn’t find the receipt to return them, which is a bullshit excuse if I ever heard one.” His tone is dull, matter-of-fact. 

“And for another dose of honesty? That makes it easier. I’ve spent the last ten years on my own, hooking up with people from time to time and never actually dating anyone, because even if I suddenly struck it rich, what can I offer them? A lifetime of secrets and lies? Never being able to tell them the truth, never being able to have kid with them if that’s something we wanted, because what the hell excuse would I give about why I never wanted the kids to have medical tests or see a doctor? I mean, who the hell knows if what I am can even have kids with a human?”

“Do you want kids?” Alex asked. He’d never considered the idea of Michael being a father, but he can kind of imagine it one day.

“No.” Michael scoffs. “I don’t have anything to offer in that department, either. All I know is how to be a fuck-up. I’d never wish me on a kid in that capacity.”

“Okay.” Alex keeps his voice light, non-judgmental. “I’m definitely not advocating that you jump up and go father a child right now, for a whole host of reasons. But for what it’s worth? You’d be a damn sight better at it than any man who had a hand in raising either one of us.”

“That’s…not exactly a high bar.”

“Nope.” Alex concurs. “It’s a really low one, actually. But it’s a threshold you’d clear. It’s the floor, not the ceiling.”

“I don’t… I don’t know about that.” Michael’s voice sounds raw, like he’s grating his words out, struggling against a weight on his chest. “I don’t… It’s not just that I don’t want a kid, Which I do not, in any way shape or form. It’s also that I don’t… know if I can love one.” He exhales carefully, draws in a ragged breath. “I don’t know if I can love anybody properly. Sometimes it feels like I’m broken, like I can’t do right by anyone I care about. It fucking terrifies me that that’s true.”

Alex is silent for a long moment. It makes sense, that Michael might feel that way. He recognizes echoes of that fear in himself sometimes. 

What kills Alex is that he’s has probably played a part in reinforcing that perception of Michael’s too, and the regret he’s feeling has pretty sharp claws hooked into his heart. For a second, he’s tempted to lean up and kiss him, chase those demons and doubts away with his lips. But that ends up back at avoiding the things they need to work though, and he wants the next time he kisses Michael Guerin to have a chance at lasting. So he makes himself find the words instead.

“I think you’re one of the most loving people I know, Guerin. One of the bravest too, and I’ve seen my fair share of bravery during war. I’ve seen plenty of cowardice too, so I feel pretty qualified to recognize those traits.” He squeezes Michael’s hand, scars rough under his skin. “When you love someone, you love them so much and so fiercely that you’d give up everything of yourself for them. I see it in the way you love Isobel and Max, I saw it the day you kissed me in the museum, the day you got between me and the hammer in my father’s hand. But you don’t always seem to show it for yourself. Sometimes I think that you don’t believe people should love you or care about you.”

“I don’t get why they would.”

Alex struggles to sit up a little more, shifts enough that he can look Michael in the eyes.

“Because you deserve to be loved.”

“Okay, sure.”

“All you words are nice, Mimi,” He sings softly, grinning as he does, the Rent lyrics he was obsessed with as a queer teenager refusing to stay off his tongue. “But love’s not a three way street. You’ll never share real love until you love yourself. I should know.” Michael rolls his eyes fondly. He’s always thought that Rent was cheesy, mocked Alex for how much he’d loved the soundtrack. “Seriously though,” Alex tells him. “Even if you don’t feel great when you hear it, you should hold onto the fact that you deserve to be loved.”

“Okay, okay. Settle down. Be cool.” Michael tugs him back, gets him to relax again. “You warm enough?”

“Mostly,” Alex says.

“There’s another blanket over there…” He gestures toward the far end of the bed, and through a series of awkward kicks and shifts of their feet, including some atypical maneuvers that his physical therapist probably wouldn’t be thrilled with, they manage to pull the other blanket closer, tuck it in around them.

Outside, the snow is coming down in massive flakes, swirling around dramatically as it falls at a frankly exhilarating rate. He isn’t looking forward to driving in this when he has to go…which he should probably do soon, before the storm gets much worse.

“No one ever said it to me.” Michael’s voice is so subdued, a musing coming out of the snow-covered silence that it takes a moment to land and process. Alex furrows his brow, confused.

“I mean, Max and Isobel, yeah,” Michael continues. “But that’s kind of a given, you know? Nobody else had ever said it. Not any of my foster parents, not anyone I’d ever been with. Not any of my friends, not that I have many of those in this town.”

Holy shit, Alex realizes. He’s talking about hearing that he’s loved. About knowing it. Believing it. Having a reason to.

“Nobody, except you. Today. When you told me that you used to feel that way.”

“That’s…” Horrible, tragic, heartbreaking, cruel, impossible, altogether too believable. “Michael, are you serious?” he breathes. “No one?”

“Not in any time that I can remember, at least.”

“You deserve so much more. So much better.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m just…not the kind of person that’s easy to love.”

“Fuck that,” Alex swears. It’s an impossible statement to believe— in part because Alex fell in love with him about thirty seconds after they connected for the first time, and has been falling deeper ever since. Loving Michael Guerin isn’t hard. And not loving him once you do is the truly impossible thing. Alex spent a good ten years withing it weren’t so impossible.

“Look, you don’t have feel sorry for me or something.” Michael shrugs, the movement shifting his arm along Alex’s shoulders. “I know I’m a difficult person. I know that I’m not easy to care about, not easy to love. I have been since I was a kid, and the Evanses knew they couldn’t love me the same way they could love Isobel and Max, so they left me behind.”

“Bullshit.” Alex tells him. “And let me quote my statement from thirty seconds ago: Fuck. That. You were a traumatized kid, Michael. When you’re an adult, you have to build love with the people you encounter in your life— feed it and support it and let it grow until you trust it. But as a kid, love should be unconditional. You weren’t difficult, you were seven.”

Michael sighs.

“We both know that’s not how it works in real life. And love doesn’t tend to stick around.”

“Okay, for the record?” Alex tells him, “This is the sort of thing that it’s really good to talk to a therapist about, because there’s only so far you can go on it with the guy who triggers a lot of this hurt in you in the first place.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Michael apologizes, tensing up. “We can change the topic-” Alex reaches out to grab Michael’s hand again. 

“Not what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is that in addition to us talking about it, you deserve to talk this over with someone who isn’t me, someone who can help you process. You deserve that. But you also deserve to know this— Me saying that I loved you? It’s not a past-tense emotion, Michael. It’s something that’s still alive and real, because if it weren’t, I wouldn’t be here, wanting to build a foundation for more.”

That’s more than he’d meant to reveal, and he hopes it doesn’t scare Michael off. He holds his breath, waiting for Michael’s reaction, which is several nerve-wracking moments in coming.

“Okay.” Michael takes a deep breath. “I think okay is all I’ve got right now.”

“Okay is good, then”

“Is it really? Michael asks.

“I think so,” Alex answers him. “Okay means that even if we don’t know where we’re going, there’s an open door out there, and a threshold we can cross if we’re ready. ‘Okay’ means neither one of us is turning our backs on this. Whatever it is.”

“That’s a lot for a really small word.”

Alex grins.

“I have a lot of hope.”

“Quite the optimist,” Michael says dryly.

“Pretty much only where you’re concerned,” Alex admits. Michael’s hand tightens in his.

“Listen… I think I want to maybe…change the subject after this, but… It’s not just you, or us. Love…I don’t see it last hardly anywhere. There wasn’t much of it in my foster homes, and yeah, you left. But… Noah kicked Isobel out when things got rough, and it fucking devastated her. Max…has been in love with a girl who can’t love him back for at least as long as you and I have been doing this dance. And I’m not too keen on Max and Isobel’s parents, but…they aren’t exactly a picture of domestic bliss these days, even though they pretend pretty well. Your friend Kyle, his dad cheated on his mom and like, half the town knew about it…and since I mentioned Liz, her Mom just up and left.”

“My Mom and Dad aren’t together either.” Alex points out.

“Yeah. I have a hard time imagining how anyone could love your dad, but let’s add them to the mix too. My point is, there’s no guarantee that love will last.”

“That’s true…” Alex says slowly. “About the only guarantee that there is, is that if you don’t let it in, give it a chance to let you build something…it doesn’t have a chance to last.”

“It’s a pretty big risk though,” Michael points out.

“One that only you can decide if you want to take the leap on,” Alex agrees.

“I don’t know enough about anything right now. My mind’s too twisted and tangled up.” He brings his hand up to brush through Alex’s hair. “I like the idea of hope though.”

“I can live on hope,” Alex promises. Afterall, he’s lived on a lot less.


	4. Look Out The Window At The Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a secret is confessed, the snowstorm continues unabated, and Alex has to decide to stay or to leave

  
They lapse into silence for a while, looking for a less intense topic than a literal lifetime of emotional hurts and scars.

Alex asks about work here at the automotive shop. Michael says it’s good, and they’ll probably have a rush of people over the next few days wanting to make sure their vehicles are prepped for the weather, which always happens after the first snow.

Michael asks about what kinds of appointments he still has to do for his leg, gets really enthusiastic in hearing about how the all-terrain foot works. Alex promises that one day, he’ll remove the foot shell and let Michael get a closer look at the mechanics of it. It feels oddly good to have someone in his regular life be interested in the specifics of the tools he uses day-to-day. 

It also feels strange that the conversation about it feels so normal, doesn’t feel strained or awkward. People pussyfoot (for lack of a better word- he’s basically got that, and tiptoe to work with here) around the topic so often that he usually finds himself having to manage their reactions and comfort level more than his own. It’s exhausting.

But Michael just seems to accept things at face value and roll with them. They talk about the specifics and mechanics of the vacuum pump and the split-toe blade features of the foot for a solid fifteen minutes or more with Michal seeming utterly engrossed in the topic, asking questions and practically drawing diagrams in the air. It’s only near the end of that conversation that Alex realizes he never had to correct Michael’s terminology once— that Michael has been naturally following his lead all along, picking up the terms and phrases that Alex uses in conversation and applying them seamlessly as they talk.

Alex realizes abruptly that it’s something Michael regularly does— he considers things like that to be basic respect, and affords it to everyone so automatically that people naturally feel comfortable around him, only withdraws it if it’s withdrawn from him first. People would describe Guerin as surly, insolent, rude, uncaring, and nonchalant… but Alex has never heard him call someone by the wrong name. He doesn’t mix up who likes to be called Mrs., Ms., or Doctor, he doesn’t call Susan Michaels “Suzy”, even though half the town still does, because she told him in the eighth grade that she prefers Susan. Alex only knows that because he’d asked once during senior year why Michael calls her by her full name, and that was the answer he’d gotten. He’s called her Susan ever since too, saw her a few hours ago at the grocery store and had gotten a smile when he’d said ‘hi Susan’, watched her smile flicker a little and re-form with less contentment when another friend had exclaimed “Suzy!” as he was squeezing past to get to the eggs.

He realizes with a start that Michael takes the effort to get people’s pronouns right, even when most people around here don’t care. A month or so ago, when he had stopped by the Wild Pony while Alex was there (and had rather shamefully ducked away to the bathrooms to avoid having to talk to Michael) he’d heard Michael refuse a shot of whiskey, saying he had to get back because Rhys Kane wanted him to check out a used pickup they were thinking of buying as their first car. Alex doesn’t really know Rhys, but Rhys’s Mom babysat for him two of three times around the time his own mom left, and when he saw her over on Main Street a couple weeks ago, she had a heart-shaped pin on her tote bag that had stripes of yellow, purple, white, and black, which Alex recognized as the non-binary flag.

For someone who has a reputation of rubbing people the wrong way, Michael is pretty intentional about treating people with respect. Although, respect is probably the wrong word. Alex has been in the military so long that the notion of respect is linked to deference and authority, chain of command for him. Michael doesn’t typically give a flying fuck about if people feel respected or deferred to. It’s more that he treats people with dignity, unless they’ve earned their way out of that consideration.

Alex thinks of all the times he’s seen Michael hustle pool, the bar fights he’s heard of, the one time he’s seen Michael throw a drunken punch, the times he’s seen Michael cut someone down with a look or a phrase. It’s always about someone disrespecting, humiliating, or picking on another person, Michael himself included. The response isn’t exactly a productive one, but it suddenly makes sense. Michael has felt like that so many times in his life, so he responds when someone mashes those buttons, whether it’s directed at him, or at someone else.

Alex doesn’t bring it up, just files that newfound understanding away to contemplate later.

They try to keep it light, talk a little bit about songs they’ve learned since high school— how neither one of them has played guitar much, if at all, but they still each love music. Michael even gets him to sing some bars of some of the things they talk about, and Alex leverages that to make Michael sing once too, loving the way that he can feel Michael’s voice reverberate against his own ribs since they’re sitting so close together. 

They even talk about Iraq— not the stuff that’s classified, not the stuff that Alex really never wants to revisit…but things about some of his buddies from over there, the antics they got up to, the better days, the ways they’d spend their down time. 

Somewhere around the time that Alex is telling Michael about how much he wants to get a dog, and that Maria’s mother had a vision of him with a beagle, so maybe he should actually start considering it… he realizes they’ve been talking for hours. It’s solidly into nighttime now, and the snow is already a couple inches deep.

He forces himself to sit up.

“I really should go,” he says regretfully, moving the blankets aside.

“Before the roads get any worse,” Michael agrees. He rubs his hand along Alex’s upper arm, over his shoulder. Alex closes his eyes for an instant, leans into the sensation.

“Or…” Michael begins.

“Or?” Alex raises his eyebrows.

“Or you could stay.” Michael shrugs, overly casual. “It’s late, it’s snowing, the roads are bad.”

“You’ve got this big, comfortable bed…” Alex deadpans, looking at the narrow mattress. Michael grins, free and easy.

“Sure, we’d have to snuggle up, Michael concedes, “But…we’d be warm. Seriously. You’ve got a pretty nasty drive in the snow if you leave now. I’d worry.” He holds out his hand in a pacifying gesture, already anticipating protests that Alex isn’t sure he even feels, let alone wants to make. “Professional opinion— You’ve got a good car, got the right tires on it, I don’t doubt your driving skills for a second. But I do doubt the roads, especially since you said you live in an old hunting cabin, and the roads out to those are usually not the most robust, or the most…paved.” He looks out at the snow, craning his neck to see more of the junkyard. “And it’s beautiful out the window, but for driving, it looks pretty bad out there.”

“I swear, Guerin,” Alex laughs, “if you start singing Baby, It’s Cold Outside, I am morally obligated to leave, road conditions be damned.”

“I would never.” Michael feigns offense, but sobers quickly. “I’m not trying to convince you to stay. Just…letting you know that it’s an option.” He goes quiet, then steels himself and looks Alex directly in the eye again, licks his lips nervously. “And one I would definitely support. Besides,” he drops his eyes from Alex’s for a long moment, focusing on his lips before he meets his gaze again, “Even though your lips do look delicious, that’s not what I’m suggesting here. Still not planning to go there tonight.”

He swallows, looks straight into Alex’s eyes for a second, then darts his eyes away. “Is that… okay? That I don’t want to?” He shakes his head. “Not even that I don’t want to. I want you. I can feel it under my skin. My lips are buzzing with it. Hands too. I always want you. But I feel too…raw, too exposed from…everything. The talking is… it’s probably good, but it’s…not easy for me.” He bites his lip, releases it again. Alex is transfixed by that detail. “You’re right. I keep running away into sex, and I don’t know if I can actually stop running, but just for tonight…I want to pause. I just…want this.” He rubs his hand solidly over Alex’s shoulder, as much to reassure himself as to reassure Alex, it seems.

“I’m right there with you,” Alex whispers, his heart thumping too-loud in his ears. 

He has so many more hopes, but most of them hinge on there being something stable enough in the shifting sands of their history for them to build on. He’s told himself he won’t get ahead of himself, reminds himself that even this is, in many ways, faster than what he imagined.

He’s told himself he can accept civility, that he’d welcome friendship. He’s told himself that he can survive if the love that he feels survives in some form. He’s been realistic that even if they both wanted a relationship, let alone any type of physical or romantic connection, if they both wanted to make it work, there’s still a very daunting uphill climb ahead. Hearing Michael talk frankly about wanting him…that’s a thrill. Hearing him talk about holding back on that in favor of something down the road honestly feels even better though.

“Of course it’s okay for you not to want to do something,” Alex tells him firmly. “It coincides with what I want too— for us to be something outside of…of sex— but even if it didn’t happen, it would still be okay. This is… this is actually kind of mindblowing to me. It’s good.” He licks his own lips, feeling like he’s about to edge out on a branch. “I feel it too, by the way. The awareness of everywhere we’re touching, every way we could be. I think it’s probably impossible for me to be near both you and a horizontal surface and not imagine how we could put that surface to use together.” Michael makes a noise low in his throat, and Alex shakes his head. 

“Not going there tonight, Guerin,” he promises, chuckling. “We’re going to keep each other honest, okay? But the reality is that for as much as I feel like I need you whenever we’re in a room together, like we’re about to ignite… what I actually need is moments like this. It feels like…disinfecting old wounds, letting them start to heal. I don’t know what feeling healed would look like…but…I really want to find out.”

  
“Please tell me that you’re not going to get up and leave my bed after a speech like that.” 

Michael is giving him that trademark grin, but Alex has always been able to see some of the vulnerability under it. It’s one of the things that drew him to Michael, pulled him into his orbit.

“”Not going anywhere tonight,” Alex tells him. “I’ll stay.”

“Okay.” Michael says, and Alex remembers that okay means hope now.

“Okay,” he answers. They grin stupidly at each other.

“Do you need anything? Need to take your leg off?” Michael offers.

“Yeah,” Alex concedes. “It’s been starting to ache a little.” He sits up, swings his leg off the bed, reaches for the switch for the vacuum pump. 

“Wait.” Michael’s reluctant hand on his elbow stops him. “There’s something I have to tell you, and I think it’s not fair if I tell you after you take your leg off.” When you’re vulnerable, when you can’t just leave is left unsaid. Alex lifts his chin. He has a pretty good guess what this will be, but he doesn’t want to assume. He can still be blindsided.

“I…um…I slept with Maria.” Michael drops his hand away as he says it. The cold air seems a little colder.

Bingo.

“I know.” Alex says levelly, then reconsiders. “I guessed.” He clears his throat. “I saw her necklace earlier.”

Michael nods.

“It was…um… last night. We were in Texas, and there was a road trip to see a faith healer, which seems a little ridiculous when you say it out loud, and we got a little lost in the desert, and things just…took a turn.”

Alex sighs.

“I was going to ask if it was serious, but that sounds like…it kind of wasn’t?” he ventures.

“Are…you upset?” Michael’s shoulders are hunched, braced for rejection. It breaks Alex’s heart. He doesn’t feel like he’s upset. After the brief flash of it when he’d first seen the necklace, he’s been waiting to feel more upset, and he just…hasn’t. It might be lurking out there, around the edges of his understanding, it might grow from a seed he didn’t realize was there, but right now…he’s not upset. He’s not sure he won’t get there though.

“You know she’s my best friend, right?”

“I…Yeah, I’m kind of remembering that now, but honestly, Alex?” Michael meets his gaze unwaveringly. “I wasn’t thinking about it that way. You’ve been gone for a decade, and I never hung out with you and your friends in high school. We never made it that far. Maria DeLuca isn’t filed under “Alex’s Best Friend” in my mind.” He licks his lips. “Like, I get that she is your best friend, but…” he trails off. “She’s someone who’s been here the last ten years, just like I have. That’s not a knock against you, it’s just a fact about her. She’s someone who knows how hard and bleak life in this town can be. She’s my bartender, she thinks I’m an ass and she’s probably right, and in our own strange way, we’re kind of friends. She’s beautiful, and so smart it hurts sometimes, and she doesn’t really take shit from anybody. I like her— I have for awhile— and I like her a whole lot more than she likes me…so when it happened, I went for it.”

“Did you do it to hurt me?” Alex keeps his voice even, neutral. It’s something he needs to know

“What!? I… No!” Michael protests. “Honestly, I was a little drunk, and I might have been thinking about you earlier when I was getting myself to that state, but when I was with her, I wasn’t thinking about you. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.” He sighs, slumps back against the headboard. “Maybe that was part of why I did it. So I wasn’t thinking about you. Or so I was thinking about myself, and about something instead of you. And I doubt it was serious for her, because she doesn’t really like me all that much. But I don’t know how I feel about it. I liked being with her. If I weren’t all tied up in knots over you, I’d ask her out. But I would never use someone and sleep with them just to make another person feel bad. If I’m going to be with someone, even for a night, it’s because I want them, not a reaction from someone else. People aren’t objects to use like that.”

Alex closes his eyes, wills himself to put his thoughts in order.

“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse, either,” he says slowly. “She’s my best friend. At the same time I’ve been in love with you for over ten years now. It seems so strange to me that someone who’s with you wouldn’t love you, or like you.” Michael doesn’t scoff aloud at that, which might be progress. “It makes me think less of them, and I don’t want to think less of my best friend. And I don’t want to think about you being with someone else. I still have hope we’ll be together someday, even though we’re not right now. But I want you to be happy, and if she makes you happy… Is it really shitty of me to want her not to be the person who makes you feel that way?” He makes himself stay calm, analytical. “Then again, we’ve never managed to be happy, so maybe if we can’t do that for each other, I’d want you two to be happy together? I don’t know. That feels like the exact wrong thing and the exact right thing all at once.”

“Well I sure as hell don’t know,” Michael drawls. “ And I sure as hell don’t know what would make me happy, because it’s been a real damn long time since I felt that way for more than a couple hours at a stretch. And if you’re waiting on me to figure out when I’ll be happy, you’ll probably be waiting a long time. Happiness isn’t really my wheelhouse. Surviving, maybe. But beyond that… I don’t know. ”

“Well, I know this much,” Alex sighs. “Right at this moment, we’re not dating, we’re not together— because we haven’t decided if that’s what we want. We haven’t agreed to be in a relationship, let alone any kind of exclusive one. The only promise we’ve made each other is to try to see what this might be, on any level. So even if it hurts to see you with someone else, I can’t actually hold it against you, or be upset if you are.”

“People can always be upset,” Michael observes.

“Yeah, well… until we actually define what this is, where we’re going with it…I’m going to try not to be.” Alex sighs. His hand are itching to touch Michael again, and he gives in, laces their fingers together. “Take the time you need to figure it out. Just…be honest with me. And don’t…” this part hurts to say. “Don’t do something because it’s what you think I want. Or because it’s what anyone else wants, for that matter. Do it because it’s the right thing for you.”

“And what if I don’t know what the right thing is?” Michael looks troubled, and Alex would do just about anything to wipe that expression off his face, soothe his fears. But these are Michael’s fears and demons to wrestle, not Alex’s to overtake.

“Then you take the time you need. You do what you need to do to figure it out.”

Michael nods, contemplating that idea.

“Will you still be here if I do?”

He wants to say yes. It’s so reflexive, it’s almost out of his mouth before he realizes he’s speaking. But he stops himself.

“I’m not going to promise that. Not because I don’t want to be, but because I’m trying to be really honest with myself and about the future. Anyone who promises you where they’ll be in the nebulous, distant future has never stepped on an IED.” His smile is grim. “They’ve never had their lives blown all to hell. So here’s what I can promise you. I have every intention of being here. What exists between us has endured so much strain and duress, and I’m still here, in your bed, in the middle of a snowstorm even though we’ve agreed we aren’t even going to kiss right now, and maybe for the foreseeable future.”

Alex meets Michael’s wary stare intently.

“Ten years ago, my father did his level best to destroy us, and pretty much succeeded. Weeks ago, I learned that you’re an alien. Five hours ago, you found out that my family has been part of a generational government conspiracy to cover up the existence of other aliens, and we don’t know how deep that mineshaft goes. Six weeks ago, you lost your sister, and there’s no guarantee you’ll get her back. Less than 24 hours ago, you slept with my best friend- who you might still have some kind of feelings for.” 

He glances aside, realizing he has more to say about that, stares deliberately at the folds of the blanket. 

“And honestly, part of me is glad you didn’t just treat her like a meaningless one-night stand, and part of me is terrified that if you have feelings for her, you won’t need me. Don’t.” He says tersely as Michael reaches for him with his other arm. Michael sits back, looking a bit sting, but he doesn’t try to break the contact that’s still holding between them. “

Don’t tell me I don’t have to worry, or anything else like that, Alex admonishes.” We’ve already talked about how love isn’t always enough, how neither of us have much of an idea of what would make us truly happy because we’ve never really experienced it. Don’t undermine the honesty of that by saying something placating right now when you don’t know how far you mean it. You aren’t in a place to decide what you want, and that’s okay.”

Alex does reach out then, twisting his torso enough to set his other hand on Michael’s knee. These are hard words to get out as well, and he doesn’t want Michael to hear them and have them land wrong.

“I’m not going to promise to wait, to not move on, because it don’t want to make promises that are outside of what I can control.” He shakes his head a little, thinking back to the sessions with his therapist. “It’s not healthy for me- it twists me up inside to do that, and I’m still trying to heal. I won’t promise to be here in Roswell, when I can still be moved around and re-stationed and betray a promise I wasn’t free to make in the first place.” The intensity if the look that Michael is giving him is so much that he can barely breathe. “But I will promise you this: I don’t foresee a time when I don’t care. I don’t foresee a time when I wouldn’t want to be here for you. I don’t know if that will always look the way it looks in my mind right now. But it’s been more than ten years of impossible hurts and hurdles, and I am still here. I’m still standing at the edge of this ledge, ready to leap if that’s what we both want. But Guerin, you have to be sure. Not sure that it will work, or that nothing will go wrong. You have to be sure you want to make the leap. And if we’re not both sure, then we don’t jump. Not with each other, at least. And we accept that possibility.”

“That makes it sounds so easy. It’s not easy.” Michael says thickly.

“Apart from falling for you, nothing about what’s between us has ever been easy,” Alex counters, choking out a laugh as tears prick his eyes. “All I want is that this time, if I’m going to fall, I take the step knowing that I want to take it, fully informed.”

Michael tilts his head.

“Do you ever think that maybe we were…destined or something? Or like..we were together in a part life?”

Alex hesitates. 

“That thought’s occurred to me,” he answers.

“I really fucking hate the idea of destiny.” Michael confesses quietly, shoulders hunched. “Not having any power to say no or decide for myself. Like… even if I wanted to date someone else, and do the picket fence thing, I’ll still always be fucked up over you. I’d still want you. How is that fair to anyone?”

“I think maybe…nothing in the world is really fair?” Alex says. “We just spend all this time trying to make it better, and not succeeding all that often. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying. And that means that we figure out what we want, and what we don’t, and we talk about it.”

“What if those are the same thing?” Michael challenges. “Like…how can I all at once not want this, because I don’t to be consumed by the intensity of this cosmic thing between us to the point that I lose who I am, and also want you, body and fucking soul with every fiber of my fucking being? How can I want to be close to you that I melt into you, and be terrified of that same outcome?

“I don’t know,” Alex says, low enough that Michael has to lean in a little. “But… I feel that way too. It fucking terrifies me, because I’ve never felt that way about anyone before. Or… since, I guess. I’ve felt that way about you since the first day you kissed me at the museum.”

Michael licks his lips. “I really want to kiss you again.”

“I do too.”

“Why are we not doing this then?” Michael wonders. If either of them so much as leans toward each other again at this moment, they’re going to be unable to keep their promises for the night. Alex stays very still. No matter how much he wants, he’s not going to be the one that messes this up.

“Promises to ourselves, knowing we’re not ready to have it go there and end up okay when it’s over. Wanting something that can last longer than a few isolated nights. That’s why.” He eases his hand away from Guerin’s knee.

“I’m going to take the leg off now, if it’s still okay.”

Michael blinks at him.

“You still want to stay?” He sounds… astonished, relieved, almost wary. “After what I told you about Maria. About…not knowing if I still had feelings for her? You still want to stay? I mean— I want that. I just… I didn’t think you would? Or at least…didn’t want to assume you would?”

It’s not like the snow outside got any less deep or the roads less bad in the last five minutes, but Alex doesn’t make that observation aloud. He has the sense it would hurt Michael, make him clam up, maybe even doubt the things he really want to tell him, leave him thinking that the logistics are why Alex is staying when they’re only the smallest factor. So, as he flips the switch on the pump and reaches for the buttons of his fly, he just says the thing that takes a little more effort to articulate.

“I definitely didn’t love hearing it,” he acknowledges. “But I liked that you were honest with me about it. Including the not being sure it’s over yet, or if you want it to be. And all of that makes me want to spend the night here, in a bed with you. Even though we don’t have all the answers. Or even very many of them. So. I’m staying.” He gestures to his jeans. “I have to, uh…take these off in order to get the leg off. Is that…okay?”

“Oh! Yeah. Of course. Whatever you need.”

Alex nods, tugs at the button fly so that all of the buttons release rapidly, allowing him to shift the jeans down over his hips.

“Oh, holy fuck,” Michael says beside him. His eyes are wide, mouth slack. “That is… That is definitely going in my spank bank.” He blinks rapidly, chagrined, realizing what he said. “Shit, I mean… if that’s okay…” he trails off. Alex wishes he could see better in the dim light spilling in from the windows and the single miniature bulb still on over the stove burner.

Alex grins, feeling a little bit wicked.

“Please do.”

Michael moans, biting his lower lip and releasing it. “You’re going to kill me, Manes.”

Alex laughs. 

Once he has the various pieces of the leg and the sleeve off, stacked next to his folded jeans, everything within easy reach, and Michael’s jeans and belt have been stashed on the counter behind the headboard for the night, Michael shows off and uses his powers to flip off the light switch. He leans back against the pillows, giving Alex space to curl in toward him and adjust. They’re definitely both wearing more clothing than either one of them normally would to sleep, t shirts and boxer briefs still on, but for where they’re at and how cold it’s going to get tonight, it seems right.

“Can I… I want to do something.” Alex says, propped on his elbow, about to slide more fully under the covers. “But… you have to stay totally still.” He catches the glimmer of amusement in Michael’s eyes, is grateful that Michael doesn’t elect to say ‘kinky’’ like he was obviously about to.

“Go ahead,” he says instead. And so carefully, Alex leans down, ducking his head and dropping a kiss to Michael’s shoulder. He can feel the heat of Michael’s body through the t-shirt, hear the deep, slow indrawn breath that Michael takes at the contact. He doesn’t prolong it, doesn’t want to put too much pressure on the gesture. He just draws back a little and snuggles down under the blankets that have been heaped around them.

He ends up tucked in against Michel’s chest, his forehead touching Michael’s shoulder. He falls asleep like that much sooner than he means to, Michael’s breath ruffling his hair, and the brief impression of a kiss pressed to the top of his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4 Title is taken from "Baby, It's Cold Outside"


	5. Such a Temptation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael and Alex Wake up together in the Airstream. 
> 
> Life happens very quickly after that.

Michael is already awake when he blinks into consciouses the next morning.

Their legs are tangled together under the covers, almost overwarm, but the air in the rest of the airstream has a bite to it when Alex starts to sit up.

“Cold.” He complains, burrowing back down into the blankets.

“Yeah, I’d guess it’s gotten down to about 58 or so in here overnight.” Micahel runs his hand slowly down Alex’s arm, spreading the warmth of his body into Alex’s again. “Not bad, considering that I forgot to flip the generator on last night. Although one of the perks of you knowing about me is that I can do this.” He closes his eyes for a second and there’s a hum as the generator comes to life. “Gotta remember to pick up more propane for it too.”

“Probably smart. I should pick up some more fuel for the generator at the cabin before too long.” Alex concedes

“Mmm. Real world encroaching,” Michael sighs. “I wish it wouldn’t. I like this. Watching you, seeing you in the morning sunlight.”

“I’ve always liked waking up next to you,” Alex confesses. He settles his hand on Michael’s hip, notes the way that Michael’s eyes drift closed at that touch. 

“Me too,” Michael agrees. “Remember that time that we drove out to the desert one afternoon, played guitar, watched the sun start to set?”

“Mmm, yeah.” Alex smiles fondly at the memory. “I fell asleep in the back of your truck. I’d been up half the night cramming for a physics exam because I didn’t want to bring home a bad grade, and I was so exhausted.” He glances up at Michael. “But I also had such a huge crush on you that I didn’t want to say no when you suggested it third hour. I spent the rest of the day looking forward to it, and then I just… fell asleep while you were playing. I was mortified, because I didn’t want you to think I was bored.” He hadn’t been bored. He’d felt safe, and the exhaustion he’s felt had undercut the hint of wariness he’d always felt when that happened, wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.

“Nah.” Michael shakes his head, smile curving slowly across his lips. “I loved that you felt comfortable enough around me to fall asleep. And I mean, you know I slept in the back of my truck plenty of times. It’s not like it seemed that weird.” He stops, then shrugs a little, like he’s pushing himself to say the next thing on his mind. “It was probably the first time anyone other than Max and Isobel had really been that comfortable with me, and… it felt good, you know? I remember sitting there and just playing as long as I could, so I didn’t stop, and wake you up.”

“You put a blanket over me,” Alex remembers.

“Yeah. It was getting cold. I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable. And I just…watched you.” He ducks his head. “I hope that’s not creepy to tell you now, all these years later. But you were beautiful, asleep there in the truck bed, and I just…wanted to be able to look at you without having to look away.”

“Rules of engagement haven’t changed here, Guerin.” Alex swallows, the sound loud in his own ears. “But when you say things like that, it makes me want to kiss you.”

“Same, except…pretty much always.” Michael’s hand is warm on his cheek, his fingers brushing along his jaw. Cautiously, with just the barest brush of pressure, his thumb slides over Alex’s bottom lip. It takes so much willpower not to open his mouth, let it brush against his tongue, draw it in to suck it eagerly, with the same eagerness he would have if it were Michael’s cock. He settles for pressing the gentlest, lingering kiss to the pad of Michael’s thumb. Even that much makes them both shiver.

“You’re such a fucking temptation, Alex.” Michael’s voice is wrecked. “And if I spend another minute here with you like this, I’m not gonna wanna leave this bed.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Another minute or two like this, and I’m going to be tempted to throw every wise and rational thing we’ve talked about out the window, just imagine you spread out on white sheets with smooth jazz playing the background, the scent of you clouding my senses.” He shifts his leg, reminding Alex how closely entwined they are. Alex isn’t sure if Michael is mocking the image, or yearning for it. Probably both. The air between them practically hums with electricity.

“Another thirty seconds and I’m going to tell you to do it,” Alex breathes.

“Then I really do need to get up,” Michael says sadly. “Because I don’t want to fuck this up, any more than we’ve been fucked up together all along. I actually have hope about the future for once. And if that hope is real, if there ever is a next time we kiss, I want it to about that hope being real, not just an idea.” He flips the covers back, careful not to pull them off of Alex. 

“Stay here though, let this place warm up a little bit. I’ll make you coffee.”

If they were partners… Alex can imagine so many morning like this— Michael rolling out of bed, offering to make them coffee, dropping a kiss on Alex’s lips before he steps away. He imagines cooking breakfast for them while Michael makes coffee, Michael stealing bacon as soon as it’s out of the pan. He’s imagining a life outside of the military now, a life where he can start to keep the promises he wants to make. It sounds like maybe one day— one day soon— Michael might be willing to make some promises too.

For now though, he watches Michael putter around the postage-stamp of a galley kitchen in his t-shirt and boxers, making coffee in the Moka pot on the stove. While he waits for it to boil, he grabs one of the blankets, drapes it around himself, and when he brings a cup of coffee for each of them back to the bed, he tucks his bare feet under the same blanket. They fit together so well like this, Alex realizes, settling himself back against the head board, making room for Michael to settle back on top of the covers he’s under. He doesn’t even have to move his leg- Michael just folds himself into the space where Alex’s shin would have been. Normally, people take extra care to leave space for the part of his limb that’s no longer there and it’s a little awkward— the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about…but Michael has always taken things at face value, doesn’t treat him with kid gloves or afford him considerations he doesn’t need. He hadn’t really realized how much that means to him.

But they’re not partners. They’re in this weird limbo. Ex-lovers who just spent the night in each others arms, people who are still just as tied up in each other as always, but who might not have that type of future together. Being around Michael, figuring out what any of this means, is like building a plane in mid-air while also trying to land it. It’s difficult, exhilarating, confusing…and absolutely essential if you’re going to avoid a fiery crash landing.

And that means that there’s something they need to address, in more detail than they already have. He wraps his hands around the mug, inhales the fragrant steam.

“So. Maria.” He says it, knowing that as much as he doesn’t want to go back to this, it feels…unfinished.

The look Michael gives him is a mix of amusement and incredulity.

“We’re doing this? Now? He asks.

Alex takes a sip of coffee.

This is good.” He meets Michael’s eyes over the rim of the mug. Michael only minimally acknowledges the compliment. Alex sighs. “Why shouldn’t we do this now? I get that things are…complicated between us. But what you said last night about Maria…look, I get it, okay? If anyone understands about loving Maria DeLuca, it would be me.”

“Who said anything about— wait, you?” Michael’s brow furrows. “Look, I’m not into policing anybody’s identity, but…aren’t you gay?”

“Very gay.” Alex affirms. “If not for that detail, she might have accepted one of the six times I proposed marriage to her.”

Michael gapes at him. “…What?”

“Yeah,” Alex says levelly. The first time was when we were…six? We were collecting rocks for the rock collections we decided to start, and I less asked her, and more referenced a future time when we were married, because that’s what I understood adults did if they wanted to see each other every day.”

Michael’s shoulders ease a little bit, a grin slowly stretching his lips until it’s a full-on smile.

“There were at least one occasion where I offered to marry her one day if she’d help me with my history homework, one time that she made me the most amazing cake for my birthday and I dramatically begged her to marry me, one time sophomore year when she managed to get us tickets to see Panic! At the Disco in Albuquerque, along with her mom somehow getting my Dad to give permission for me to go, so that was also one of the three times I kissed her. Then there was the pact we made after I came out to her that if neither one of us found someone by the time we were 50, we were just going to marry each other. And and one time…maybe three or four years ago, when she was worried about her Mom, and the bar, and losing health insurance that I told her very seriously that if it ever came to it, I’d marry her so she’d have my military insurance and benefits and all the rest. That last time is probably the only time either of us considered it seriously. But you should know I meant it. It was before marriage equality, and I’d spent a long time figuring that the only way I’d ever get married was if it was to protect someone I cared about, since I’d never been into women sexually. That seemed like it would qualify. Seemed like a good way to tell the system to fuck off too.”

“Back up to the part where Maria and you kissed?” Michael asks. This time, Alex counts off on his fingers.

“Spin the bottle during a party freshman year, Panic! Tickets, and once during the summer between Junior and Senior years when we were hanging out almost every day, taking naps in the same bed together, doing cooking experiments together, and were practically joined at the hip. We tried making out to see if we could make a go of it. Everything else was so perfect, we had this…borderline romantic friendship, so we talked about it and thought…let’s see.”

“And…” Michael prompts.

“And did you know that you can kiss someone, and it’s can be lovely, and technically perfect, and you can genuinely care about each other and still feel absolutely no physical spark? And when that happens, you can angst about it, or you can curl up in bed together and watch The Martix on VHS?”

“Part of me has trouble believing you chose the non-angsty option.”

“Maria DeLuca, man.” Alex shakes his head, feeling for a second like the teenager he had been. “She brings out the chill in me.” He shifts his grip on the mug carefully. “So if there’s something between you two…I can’t stand in the way of that. No matter what exists between us, I don’t want to be the reason either of you get hurt.”

“Alex…it’s not like that for her. It was a…a one-time thing. She made that very clear. She might even hate me for having gone there.”

“So be sure,” Alex tells him gently. “This thing between us, it’s kept us in orbit around each other for a decade. Sometimes with you, I don’t know which way is up. You don’t remember a time when all of this didn’t hurt, didn’t twist us up. I want so many things, and some of them contradict each other, or might not happen for a long time. I want to kiss you. I want you to take this cup of coffee out of my hand and manhandle me down in this bed right here. I want to wake up with you and watch you make coffee in the mornings. I want for it not to hurt either of us that I want those things. I want you to forgive me for the things I’ve done. I want to forgive you for the hurts you’ve leveled at me. I want you to be happy. I want that to be with me, and if it can’t be, I want it to be with someone who I believe in their goodness, instead of someone like… Lindsey. But at the end of the day, there’s only two things that I want so much it’s almost like a need. I want to know you for you, know that any doors we open or close are one that we decided on. And I want for for us not to hate or resent each other. I’m including Maria in that. Guerin, I want you to put yourself first, figure out what you need. If that’s not me right now…that’ll hurt, and I’m probably not going to give up hope that there’s still something for us down to road. But it’s not a good dynamic if we don’t want the best for each other from the getgo. I’m pretty convinced that I need you in my life, no matter what that looks like. Now you’ve gotta figure out if that’s true for you, too. Even if it takes another ten years.”

“No offense, but another decade like the last one sounds pretty miserable,” Michael tells him.

“Okay. There’s a mark to beat,” he acknowledges.

Michael snorts. “Finish your coffee. This has been an awful lot of talking for a night with this much intimacy and this few orgasms. Talking is possibly more exhausting than sex. Who knew.”

“You would, if you talked about your feelings.” Alex remarks mildly. Michael pulls a face.

“This is kind of…nice though,” Michael finally says.

“Trusting each other? Having coffee? Not screwing it up at the first sign of daylight?” Alex can’t help but sass him a bit before getting serious once more. “Yeah, it is.”

“We should do it again. The coffee part at least. Like…keep talking,” Michael suggests.

“How about Tuesday?”

“I…yeah. Tuesday.” Michael nods. “Tuesday works.”

He leaves his coffee mug in Guerin’s miniature sink. His first stop that morning is the Pony.

He doesn’t mean to tell Maria about Michael. Doesn’t want his hope to be factor in her decision. Doesn’t want to know if she’d choose him or Michael, doesn’t want the choice even framed that way. Doesn’t want that, because he thinks he’d be disappointed on some level no matter what choice gets made. It would sting to know that she has feelings for the same man he does. It would sting to know she doesn’t value Michael and his heart the way Alex does. He doesn’t want his thumb on the scales in this.

If he influences either of them about this thing they already all feel tangled up on, he’ll never feel honest or good about the outcome. So he tells her that it’s fine, the fact that she and Michael slept together. He doesn’t give her any response about the idea that it would never happen again. He wishes that were the end of it. But he can see Maria fighting her feelings like she has most of their adult lives. He knows Michael would be hurt to hear her say she doesn’t like him. He hates the idea of Michael hurting,. His own pain seems like it might hurt him less.

Alex can live with a little discomfort, he can live with heartbreak. He can’t live with influencing the outcome beyond telling them it’s fine, letting them figure it out. Even wanting that for a second makes him feel like he’s becoming his father. Alex refuses to be a person who pulls levers to get the outcome he desires in his interpersonal relationships. Being raised by Jesse Manes made him good at that. He can do it professionally. He can weaponize it against his father. But wondering if he’s within a hundred miles of that approach in his personal life shakes him to his core, and he just… refuses. He’d crawl over rusty nails, broken glass, and hot coals before he’d tell Michael who to love or date, before he tells Maria the same. The hurt of seeing them together while he stands to the side would be nothing next to the emotional necrosis of trying to sway their decisions.

All he wants is to let this play out, let them know that he loves them both, no matter what the future holds. He holds back from saying it as strongly as that though, because it sounds like permission, and he’s not quite that into self-flagellation. And there’s also the kernel of doubt that niggles in the back of his mind, wonders if can really truly hold to this course, be happy for them and step aside if that’s what Michael ends up needing of him. He uses the call from Kyle to duck out, not have to answer any of the hard questions Maria might still ask of him. Not answer any of his own. As is common when things involve Michael, things that feel simple and clear in his presence feel a lot more complicated out of it. Solving puzzles, deciphering coded letters is a welcome respite from trying to decipher his own life.

They never get that Tuesday coffee.

Caulfield happens, and the world goes to shit. Or maybe it just reveals itself to be the shit it already was.

There’s so much pain, death, heartbreak… everything else gets pushed to the side. He changes his plans, reenlists. He puts duty before desire, with the full knowledge that Michael may not thank him for it, or even forgive him for it.

He offers up everything he can think of to make it better. His guitar. His expertise. The secure location to work on saving Max. His support. His understanding when Michael says he wants to make things work with Maria. That he doesn’t want Alex. He absorbs the anger, because that’s something he can do for Michael. He learned a long time ago how to take hits— the physical ones, and the emotional and verbal ones as well. These sting, but they don’t hurt bone deep. 

He’s already hurting because of how much Michael is hurting, after all.

Nothing can hurt deeper than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title from Billy Joel's "She's Such a Temptation" 
> 
> "It's time for me to be on my way I know  
> I've got business to conduct  
> And I've got places to go  
> But I can't help looking at her sleeping instead  
> Another morning I'll have trouble climbing out of this bed  
> Because - she's such a temptation"
> 
> This is the song that always plays in my mind when I'm awake beside someone I love (particularly in the mornings), and it very well reflects a lot of what Michael is feeling (It was playing in my head when I wrote that waking up scene). This verse is also very much aligned with what they're feeling here:
> 
> I look so tired cause I don't get much sleep  
> And I've got too many commitments that are too hard to keep  
> And I try to be rational  
> And I try to be wise  
> But it all gets blown to pieces  
> When I look in her eyes  
> Because - She's such a temptation  
> And nothing can save me


	6. You Gotta Let Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year later on, a lot has changed.
> 
> One thing that hasn't changed though, is that Alex still has a piece of the spaceship console. Another thing that hasn't changed is that Michael still has no idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we jump past the current air dates and are no longer canon compliant. Everything from here forward is generally canon-compliant through 2x02, possibly 2x03. Beyond that, happy accidents.

Things get better slowly. It takes months, but the passage of time heals a lot of rifts and wounds.

Michael moves the airstream back to the Auto yard.

Alex doesn’t see him around the next couple of times he goes into the Pony. He asks Maria and she shrugs.

“He doesn’t tell me those things anymore,” she tells him.

“You guys still okay?” he asks.

“We’re okay,” she affirms. “We’re just not together.”

“I know what that’s like.” Alex smiles ruefully.

“You and me,we’re starting a club,” she declares. “First item on the agenda: tequila.” She pours them both a shot. Then another. He ends up calling Kyle to give him a ride home.

He sees Michael a few times over the next couple of weeks. At the lab, and grabbing a to-go order from the Crashdown, once at the Pony where he and Maria really do seem okay. Michael greets him as he comes over to order, Maria hands him his beer, they chat for a minute and she moves on down the bar while Michael turns to the pool tables. Alex asks her if she’s okay. She scoffs at him.

“It’s only awkward if you make it awkward, or if you try to pretend too hard. If you let it be what it is, make the effort to feel it and not give it too much power, you’re fine. She eyes him cannily. “But you already know that.”

He remembers when he’d said those words to her, sitting at that very bar damn near a year ago. How much has changed, how much hasn’t. 

“Touche,” he replies.

“He’s not over you, you know.” She slips a napkin under his glass to soak up the condensation. “He never was.”

“Is that why you…”

She scoffs again.

“Please. I love you and your handsome face, but the only time you get to take up space in my bed these days is when we’re having movie nights, or if you’re letting me paint your nails again. Our issues weren’t about you, Alex. We just…reached the end of where we were good enough for each other that it made sense to be together. We had a good thing, until it was taking more from each of us to make it good than we were getting out of it. And a lot of what was good…it was friendship stuff, not forever relationship stuff. I mean, plus the sex. The sex is pretty much always good. Man’s got talents.”

“Yes, he does.” Alex agrees. His cheeks are burning a little.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” She laughs. But this is the one weird perk of having a friendship that survived through dating the same guy.”

Alex can’t help laughing at that.

“I’m serious though,” she continues. “He hasn’t stopped loving you. And I know you haven’t stopped loving him. Not calling you out,” she holds up her hand. “Just…you did the most selfless thing I can imagine, so we could have a shot at it. And for a long time, it was good. It was what we needed. Possibly the most successful relationship of my life, because despite the fact that it’s something different now, now that the romance is over… I don’t hate him. I don’t even dislike him. He was an okay boyfriend. Excellent ex boyfriend though. Changed the oil in my truck free of charge last week. Pays his bar tab most of the time now too.”

“I thought I was the most successful relationship of your life,” he teases. She shakes her head and leans in to kiss his cheek.

“You’re in a league all your own, babe,” she promises. But seriously, I want you to know this— I understand what you did for Guerin and I last year, and ever since. My turn now: if you guys ever have a shot at working it out, I want that for you. And if you do make a go of it, I want an invitation to the wedding.”

It’s Alex’s turn to scoff now. “If there were ever a wedding, you’d be in the wedding party. No matter who I’m marrying.”

“Love you too,” she tells him. “And if you haven’t locked that down before we hit retirement age, we’re totally revisiting that marriage of convenience thing.”

“You’re the only woman I ever considered getting fake married to.”

“Well, I can tell you this. Our first dance has to be to a Panic! At the Disco song. You get to choose which one though.”

“By the age people in our generation will be before we’re able to retire? It might need to be something we can dance to in wheelchairs.”

She laughs at that, squeezes his hand before stepping away to serve the next patron.

Alex watches Michael in the mirror, leaning over the poll table to get the right angle. He seems…grounded. He’s still on his first drink of the night, and despite the fact that his two most recent breakups are in the same room, he doesn’t seem like he’s spoiling for a fight. He’s not even hustling pool, Alex realizes. He’s just playing. There’s a twenty dollar bill tucked under hte chalk on the corner of the table, sure. But he’s playing George Anderson, who has won the last three championship nights Maria’s held. It’s a legit bet, not hidden behind any facade. Just Michael being upfront about what he can do, confident in his skills. For the first time in a number of months, Alex gives himself a tiny bit of permission to hope.

He’s called out of town for a while after that, first on an emergency assignment, and then for a schedule training after only three days back in Roswell, so it’s more than a month before he gets a chance to visit Michael deliberately. He parks at the Auto shop, watches Michael appreciatively for a few seconds, jeans hugging his ass as he leans down under the hood of a light blue Chevy, cursing at something. 

“Hey.” He says with a welcoming smile when he see Alex, reaching for a rag to clean his hands. “What brings you out here?”

“I have something that I think really belongs to you.” He hauls the backpack he brought with him out of the car. “I should have given this to you a long time ago. But I was afraid, and a little bit of a coward. I told myself that there were reasons I needed it, but…I shouldn’t have kept it this long.”

Michael looks puzzled and a little wary now, but he takes the backpack when Alex holds it out to him. Unzips it, and draws out the piece of the Alien spaceship.His entire body stills.

“Where did you…”

“It was hidden in the wall of the hunting cabin that Jim Valenti left me,” Alex explains. “The symbols on it… it’s what he used to encode the letters he left for Kyle when he was dying. It’s how we deciphered them. How we learned about Caulfield.” They’ve scanned every inch of it now, backed it up in multiple safe locations. They’d done that months ago though. He shouldn’t have waited this long to bring it to Michael.

“You had this the night…”

“Of the snowstorm? Yes.”

“Did you know what it was when I showed you my lab?”

“No. Not then. I had not idea about the spaceship before yo brought me down into your bunker. But…as soon as you showed me the spaceship console…it was impossible not to know.” And then he’d come here, asked Michael not to leave, spilled his heart out and still kept secrets. It felt necessary then, but now it feels like a betrayal “I’m sorry. I should have given it to you earlier. I just…needed there not to be any secrets or lies left between us.”

“I…” Michael lets out a shaky breath, staring at the piece of alien tech in his hands. “I think I need some time, Alex.”

“I understand.” He does. This isn’t a gift or an offering, it’s evidence of what Michael has to also see as a betrayal. But it needed to be done. Secrets that shouldn’t be kept aren’t shelf-stable. They only generate more rot the longer they’re kept. He heads back to his car, looks up as he climbs in. Michael’s eyes are searing into him.

“Thank you.” Is all Michael says. Alex nods, shuts the card door and pulls out of the lot. He’d left his day clear from here on out, but there are a dozen things he can do to fill his time. And it looks like he’s going to need them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title is from "Open Your Eyes" by Tyler Blackburn
> 
> My desires to have this short chapter be named after the concept of letting something go, and to work one of Tyler's songs into the chapter titles have aligned quite nicely.
> 
> Lyric sample:   
> "Gonna show you what is real  
> You gotta let go , let go, Oh...  
> And open your eyes, open your eyes"


	7. Fortress Around Your Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael is waiting in Alex's driveway when he gets home.
> 
> Grilled Cheese is not on the menu.

Alex doesn’t get back to his house until well after dark. The lights have gone on with the timer. He doesn’t like coming home to a dark house, a dark driveway. He doesn’t like surprises in his living space. The fact that Michael’s truck is parked there, Michael sitting in the truck bed…that’s a surprise that has twin tendrils of hope and trepidation twisting through him, like the snakes of the caduceus.

“Guerin.” He says by way of greeting as he exits his SUV. Michael stands up from the tailgate of his truck.This feels uncomfortably familiar.

“That night. That we spent together during the snowstorm.” Michael makes no move to get up. “You came back, and you asked me not to leave.”

“Yes.” Alex doesn’t hesitate to answer that. “I heard a song on the radio, and I just…turned the car around and drove back to you to ask you to stay.”

“But you knew I couldn’t go. Because you were holding a piece of my spaceship. You were basically holding me here, without me even knowing it.”

Ales swallows.

“In effect.”

“Why?” Michael asks plainly. “Was it because you were trying to control me? Or because you couldn’t stand the thought of me leaving?”

“The second one,” Alex says quickly, as if by getting the words out fast enough, he can erase the doubt in Michael’s mind, inoculate them both from the pain of ever believing that Alex was actively trying to control him. He shies away from the instinct to wonder if his subconscious motivations had been less noble though.Even if that was the case, it hadn’t been what he was actively thinking, actively choosing at the time. “Only the second one. It was fear, not manipulation.” Alex doesn’t think the answer is going to suffice, but Michael just nods. He shoves his hands in his back pockets.

“So let me ask you this. Now that you’ve given be the piece of the spaceship, does that mean you want me to go? That you want me to leave?”

Alex is horrified. He takes an involuntary step forward.

“No! Not at all.” His heart clenches at the thought that Michael would believe Alex wants him gone. “I will never want you gone. I just…knew that the longer I had it, the worse it was, like I was trapping you against your will. Keeping secrets. Hurting you.”

Michael tilts his head back to look up at the sky for a long moment.

“Good.” His tongue darts out to wet his lips. “Because I don’t think I want to go anywhere. I think that what I’m looking for…it’s right here.”

Alex looks at him, unbelieving. He couldn’t possibly mean…

Michael is shaking his head, lips curving into a rueful smile.

“I don’t want to walk away. I don’t want to look away.” He takes a step forward. Alex takes one too, until they’re close enough they could almost touch.

“Michael…”

Alex is helpless, hopeful, and too afraid of his own hubris to say anything more.

“You said, we said that if we ever kissed again, we’d do it because we both wanted to, were both prepared to take that step together. Well, I want to kiss you, Alex Manes. If you still want to kiss me.

“Every single day,” Alex tells him, trying not to let his voice shake. “I want to kiss you every single day.”

“I built up these walls, this fortress around my heart,” Michael tells him. “I built them to stand up to you, not let you in. I tried to push you away, because it just…hurt to much to be around you. It felt safer not to go there. But you didn’t leave.You didn’t push me to do anything more than be your friend. You stayed, and you seemed good with what we were, until I convinced myself that you were over me, even if I couldn’t get over you. And then you gave me that piece of the spaceship today, and part of me wanted to kiss you because you were making sure I was free, but most of me was terrified that you didn’t want me to love you anymore, that you wouldn’t want this anymore.”

“I want you,” Alex assures him.”I have never gotten over you. I don’t even know if I can.”

“Good,” Michael says decisively. “Because I’m fucking done with the fortress.” And them Michael is kissing him, surging against him, their lips finding each others. He feels tears on his cheeks, and isn’t sure if they’re his or Michael’s. Maybe both. It doesn’t matter, because Michael is real and solid in his arms, mouth hot against his, body lean and hard against him. There’s a roaring in his ears as the world builds and crashes against them like a wave, but they’re left untouched by it, because the only thing that matters is Michael’s hand gripping the back of his neck, his thumb pressing into Alex’s cheek. 

He’s too nervous to ask for what he wants in that moment, but when Michael growls out “want you” against his lips, he blurts out “Yes, please, yes,” like it’s a prayer. 

“Inside, or right here?” Michael asks, and oh fuck, Alex hadn’t even considered right here as an option. But if Michael has, if he came here prepared for that…the idea of it steals Alex’s breath away.

“I would get on my knees on the gravel right here in a heartbeat,” he tells Michael, watches Michael’s eyes go even darker with lust as he imagined it. “But I want you in my bed.”

“Yes,” Michael growls, capturing his lips again in a scorching, incendiary kiss. They move toward the door and somehow, miraculously, don’t trip. Michael reaches behind him, tries the door handle.

“Locked,” he gasps. “Need the keys.” Alex can’t remember what pocket his keys are in. The car is new enough to have a keyless ignition, he just has to have the fob with him, and he doesn’t want to stop touching Michael to look for them.

“Thought you could handle locks,” he says instead.

“I wouldn’t,” Michael counters, hand clutched in Alex’s shirt. “Not without your permission.”

“You have it,” Alex tells him, tugging him down to kiss him again, taking the lead this time. A minute or so later, Michael leans his head back against the doorframe, both of them gasping for air.

“Would you look at that,” he says with his trademark grin, chest heaving. “Looks like it’s open after all.”

He’s kissing Alex again by the time they’re moving through the doorway, slamming him up against the wall with his hips the second they’re inside. He yanks Alex’s jacket off, pins both of Alex’s hand to the wall above his head, running his free hand down Alex’s chest, tweaking a nipple through his shirt while his hips grind Alex against the wall in slow circles and he kisses him slow and dirty, trails his way from Alex’s lips to the hinge of his jaw, scrapes his teeth where he knows Alex always melts and shivers at that touch. When he releases Alex’s hands, Ales shoves at his coat, drags it off him and drops it on the floor as well.

“Bedroom,” he urges, and Michael capitulates.

“Lead the way.”

Alex doesn’t want to stop touching Michael so he tangles their fingers together, leads him down the hallway. Inside the master bedroom he turns back to Michael, finds himself in the other man’s arms again, the kisses coming slower now, but also deeper, even more intense.

“Want to see you,” Michael murmurs. “Naked. Want to touch you, taste you.”

“I want you inside me,” Alex tells him, because he’s trying to be direct in his communication these days.

“Yes,” Michael agrees in a hissed whisper. “But like this. Facing each other. I want to see your face, look in your eyes when I’m moving inside you. Want to see everything I’m doing to you. Want you to see everything you’re doing to me.”

That’s so much. Alex feels like his chest in going to burst. He can’t even speak, just nods. Michael strips off his own shirt, starts working on the buttons of Alex’s. Once Alex is shirtless and Michael has reacquainted his hands with every inch of Alex’s torso, the smooth planes of his back, once Alex has hand a chance to do the same with him, Michael pushes him down to sit on the edge of his bed, goes to his knees to help him with his pants and boxer briefs, pulling the garments down his legs as Alex helps him tug them away from his waist, licking his lips hungrily as Alex’s cock comes into view, thick and dusky red, a pearl of precome already gathered at the tip.

“You want your leg on or off?” Michael asks, like it’s the sort of question that everyone normally asks each other during sex. It’s Alex’s reality now, but it still floors him how casually Michael has accepted it.

“Off.” He decides, reaching for the pump.

“Okay,” Michael tells him. “You take care of that. I’m going to take care of this.” And with that, his mouth is on Alex’s cock, wet velvet heat engulfing him, making him cry out. Michael’s curls tickle the inside of his thighs, still one of the most erotic things he thinks he’s ever seen. Heat coils in his belly. He threads his hand through those curls, needing to touch them. He knows from experience that he could tighten his grip, make Michael drop the way he always does when someone pulls his hair, go pliant and slack-mouthed so that Alex could take the lead, drive himself into this heat, fuck Michael’s mouth. They’d both enjoy it, but it’s not what he wants right now. He wants them both present and alert, wants Michael setting the pace. He wants to follow Michael’s lead.

“Fuck, Michael I’m too close,” he breathes out, arching his neck, fighting the need to come.

Michael pulls off just enough to look up at him.

“You know what you need to do,” He chides. “Can’t open you up, can’t get my fingers inside you, can’t fuck you the way you want until you get your leg off. So if you want to come on my cock, you know what you have to do. Otherwise,” he licks a broad stripe from root to crown with the flat of his tongue, lapping up another drop of precome from the tip, “I’ll get you off, and immediately start working you back up again until you’re ready for me to fuck you until you come again.”

Alex feels like he’s floating for a second, realizes that the punched-out noise of helpless arousal that he just heard actually came from him. He fumbles with his leg, fingers clumsy with arousal and the unfamiliarity of the angle, but he manages it. Contrary to his usual routine he just tosses the pieces on the floor as soon as he gets them off. When he’s done, Michael tips him back on the bed, hitches Alex’s right leg over his shoulder so he can get a better angle. There are lube-slicked fingers at his entrance, and Alex realizes dizzily that Michael had come prepared.

No one- not even his own hands with a toy has done this for him in weeks, so he’s tight, but Michael is patient, stroking and pressing with slick fingers, easing inside him, slicking the way for a second finger that helps stretch him open. More lube, deliberate brushes against his prostate, the wet heat of Michael’s mouth on his cock that keeps him in a heady state of arousal until he’s begging for a third finger and once he gets that, for Michael to fill him up himself. And then Michael is standing, flicking open the button on his jeans and toeing off his boots, dragging his worn jeans off with lube-slicked fingers, taking in the sight of Alex spread out before him.

Alex raises himself up on his elbows, watches as Michael rolls a condom down over his familiar length, tears open another sample packet of lube with his teeth and slicks himself so he can lean over Alex and sink into him. As soon as the head of his cock is seated inside him, he kisses Alex, drinking down their combined moans like blended whiskey as he slides in the rest of the way. Alex can taste himself on Michael’s tongue.

When he starts to move, it’s slow, letting Alex adjust. He speeds up a little one that’s happened, once Alex’s fingers clutch his hip without digging in on the verge of pain, but he doesn’t reach the pace that Alex anticipates. Instead, he keeps that inexorable, rolling movement that has him gliding against Alex’s prostate with every stroke. It sparks slow-rolling waves of pleasure through Alex’s body, each one having time to crest, but not fully subside before the next one is upon him.

He’s gasping, arching into it, feels like he’s held perpetually at the brink of orgasm. Michael’s lips are pink and parted breathless as he gazes down from above him, a blush of exertion starting to extend down his chest. It takes strength and stamina to maintain this much control over one’s actions- Alex knows that well enough. This…this is so like what they’ve done before, and so different all at once. This isn’t just sex, it’s not fucking, it’s not giddy, eager fumbling, it’s not coming together with the intensity of a lightning storm. Michael is making love to him. This is a declaration of feeling, or intent. It’s a new horizon. He feels tears form in his eyes, leak out the corners, slide back to be absorbed in his hair near his temples. He’s so close to the edge, but he doesn’t move his hand from Michael’s hip to touch himself, doesn’t break any point of contact between their bodies.

“Fuck, yes,” he tell Michael instead. “I’m so close. So close, Michael.” The sounds of his name on Alex’s lips while he’s balls deep inside of Alex is the only thing that makes Michael’s rhythm falter.

“Yeah,” he manages, regaining the rhythm again. “I can tell. So tight around me, you’re leaking so much…” he is. His cock has left a slick spot on his stomach, sliding through his own mess with every ebb and pull of Michael’s hips. “You think you can come from this?” Michael asks him, demanding and breathlessly wondering all at once. “Come on my cock, just that alone?”

“Yeah,” Alex pants out, holding Michael’s gaze, burning with the intensity of it. He tightens his hold. “Just don’t stop. Don’t look away.

“Never do,” Michael gasps back, holding that same pace, giving him just the tiniest bit more speed. It’s exactly what Alex needs to come untouched, painting his own stomach with his spend. Michael holds him through it, fucks him through it, each stroke drawing more pleasure from Alex’s body until it’s overwhelming. He never does look away, not even for a second. ALex knows because he fights to keep his eyes open the entire time, let Michael see into his very soul if that’s at all possible. Michael starts to slow, to pull away, even though he hasn’t come yet, but Alex grasps his sweaty shoulder and shakes his head.

“Keep going. Whatever you need,” he urges. “What ever you need, take it. Let me give it to you. You’re so good Michael. So good to me. Want you to come inside me. He raises his hand to Michael’s face, cradles his jaw, traces his thumb along Michael’s lips. Alesx can see the ripple of pleasure go through Michael at his words, so he keeps it up, telling Michael how good he is, how good for Alex he is as Michael presses a kiss to his palm, pulls his thumb in between plush lips to lave it with his tongue. True to his word, he never looks away. Neither of them do. Despite the intensity of the aftershocks, the overstimulation Alex is experiencing with each thrust, the way he has to blink and bite his lip to keep from screaming out about how it’s just so much,despite the way that Michael’s eyes fall closed as he comes so hard that Alex can feel the throbbing pulses despite the condom, every time they open their eyes, they’re gazing back at each other.

“Fuck,” Michael breathes, slumping over beside him on the mattress

“Holy Shit,” Alex agrees, so exhausted that he can barely keep his legs resting around Michael’s waist. He lets his limbs slump back down to the bed as Michael eases out of him and collapses, craning his neck so he can see to remove the condom. He ties it off, tosses it in the garbage can near the door (possibly assisted by his alien powers because who on earth throws with that kind of accuracy when you’re limbs are made of post-coital rubber?) and, because he’s closer, snags some tissues from the box on the nightstand to clean Alex’s stomach enough that he can spoon up behind him and curl an arm around his chest.

“I know we probably need to talk, but can we, like…nap for a few minutes first?” Michael asks, nuzzling against Alex’s shoulder, soft curls tickling the back of his neck.

“Yeah,” Alex says, smiling and turning his head just enough to brush a kiss along the nearest expanse of Michael’s skin he can find, which happens to be his bicep. “Nap first.”

The sweat is cooling on his skin, and he’s debating the merits of moving enough to grab the blanket that they’ve knock away from the foot of the bed through their activities versus hoping he’s warm enough with just the heat of Michael’s body when he feels the blanket being dragged across their legs. Neither of them moved, but Michael’s half asleep, and as he relaxes even more, the blanket stops moving, because he fell asleep while trying to move it with his mind. Still, it’s close enough now that Alex can drag it up over their shoulders without having to move too much. Perks of dating a telekinetic alien, apparently.

They don’t talk immediately when they come awake in the dark. Instead, they rouse to the fog of their bodies moving together, aroused in sleep, and then half-wakefulness that become full wakefulness once they start exchanging deliberate touches and sleep-drunk kisses. Alex is hard, can feel that Michael is too, the length of him firm against Alex’s lower back, slow, rocking thrusts beneath the blanket bringing them to even greater level of arousal.

“There’s lube in the nightstand,” Ales says eventually, as Michael trails feather light kisses over his shoulders and he himself whispers kisses across the soft skin of Michael’s wrist. Michael find it, pops the lid open.

“No condoms though,” Michael observes.

Fuck. There is another box, but it’s in the closet in the hall. He and Forrest must have used the last one in here back when they were doing their thing, and he hasn’t had occasion to restock since, or even notice the box was empty. He doesn’t want move, get out of bed, find his crutch. But he really wants to have Michael inside him again. He’s having a very fierce mental debate with himself about whether lube and fingers will suffice, when Michael clears his throat and offers another solution.

“I um…got my tests results back earlier this week. From after Maria and I broke up. All clean. Have you…”

Alex swallows.

“Yeah. After Forrest, so a few months back. There um… hasn’t been anyone since then”

“Me neither. Just Maria, since the last time we… Anyway, I guess the next question is… would you want that? Sex…without a condom?

“I’ve never…without a condom.” He says awkwardly. He’s more tense than he wants to be, disclosing that. Michael’s hand smooths down his side, over his rib cage, his hip, his thigh, reassuring. “Like, blowjobs if I was dating someone for awhile, but I’ve never not used them for anal. Giving or receiving. Mostly for practical reasons, but…” He hesitates. “Um…it might sounds stupid, but…” he laughs at himself. “I was saving that— being fluid bonded, not using barriers for someone special. Someone I was going to be with long-term.”

“Not stupid,” Michael tell him. “I get it. And I understand that you don’t want to go there with me.”

“No, that’s the thing.” Alex blinks back tears, refusing to cry over this. Refusing to cry when Michael is right here, holding him, like he’s wanted for damn near as long as he can remember. “I do want it. No matter how long this is for, I want to feel that. With you. You were basically always who I was holding out for. I want this, with you, right now, and I don’t want some bullshit, overly romanticized ideal I constructed as a teenager that was influenced by heteronormative societal standards that are also rooted in sexism and virginity constructs to get in the way of this.” He takes a breath. He wants to get this out before he gets too much in his own head, loses the courage to say it. “We’re both clean, we both want it. Yes, fuck me without a condom.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Michael says, tracing his lips tenderly over Alex’s shoulder blades, “It’s practical, a safety thing too. And in case you haven’t noticed, I like practical” He pauses, presses a kiss between Alex’s shoulders and when he speaks, his breath ghosts across Alex’s skin. “But also, for what it’s worth, I’m in this for the long haul. I know we have a lot to work out, and I know it’s probably never going to be easy. But you waited for me, and if you don’t want more than a night of this, then I guess it’ll just be my turn to wait on you.”

“Wait, really?” Alex had figured that his optimism about this was still putting the proverbial cart before the horse, that when they actually talked, they’d figure out where the limits of what Michael was willing to try would be. He hadn’t dared to count on anything long-term, or even public. He felt his pulse jump at the same time his cock does too. “I don’t know if my heart or my dick is more into that.”

“Probably your heart,” Michael observes dryly. “But since we’re both kind of horny and desperate for each other at the moment, can we to the part that requires more talking in a little bit?”

“Yes,” Alex told him. “Want you in me, like, five minutes ago. As long as you’re cool not using barriers,” he adds belatedly” He takes ‘oh yeah’ that Michael whispers against his ear as consent. “Just…tell me how you want me.”

“Mmm. Want you right here, just like this. Just how we woke up, spooned together like this,” Michael tells him, voice low in his ear, breath whispering over his earlobe. “Want to be able to slide my hand between your legs, feel that you’re hard for me.’ He demonstrates as he speaks, and rolls his hips forward after. “Want you to be able to feel what being with you does to me.” He leans over and captures Alex’s lips in a languid, unhurried kiss. “Want to kiss you until neither of us know how to breathe anymore, and…” he slides his hand back, trails a finger across Alex’s entrance, and, finding that Alex is still slick and open enough for it, slides his finger in the the first knuckle. “I want to slick you up again, open you back up so I can slip inside you just like this.”

“God, yes.” Alex presses back against Michael’s finger, and a moment later there are two there, both slick with fresh lube to open him back up, curling inside him. And then, he withdraws his fingers, lifts Alex’s right leg up to allow for a better angle, and slides in fully, the blinding heat and sensation of him sparking a million different pleasure centers in Alex’s brain. The new angle allows Michael to wrap his slick hand around Alex’s very erect cock so that each thrust of his hips also means that Alex is fucking forward into his hand. They kiss, Alex twisting back and Michael leaning over him, deep and filthy and also the sweetest kisses Alex can remember. There’s pleasure in every direction, and Alex has no choice but to let it overtake him. Despite his earlier orgasm, he doesn’t last long under the onslaught— especially not when Michael shudders behind him, his moans disappearing into the kiss they’re sharing while Alex feels the the heat of Michael’s release flooding through him. He comes mere moments later, spilling over Michael’s fist while Michael’s other arm clutches him back against his chest.

Michael holds him for a long time after, their heartbeats settling again. The darkness outside has started to lift. It’s not dawn yet, but the sky is getting lighter, a hint that dawn isn’t far away. Alex turns so he can see Michael’s face, touch him more freely. He feels Michael’s cum leaking out of him as he moves. It’s a new experience- one he’s not sure that he likes exactly, but one that sends aftershocks of delighted lust though him at the memory of what they’ve just done together.

They both desperately need showers, but their mingling scent isn’t something he wants to wash away just yet. He feels sated and still almost wild with the need to touch Michael, map every muscle and bone and whorl of hair with his fingertips. Michael seems to feel the same. It’s re-learning each others bodies. They still have to talk, but this… this is its own type of communication, a language without words that they speak to each other in the pre-dawn light. It’s a language of lovers, of bodies, of desires…a language poets can only hope to translate. 

Words have no place in these moments. In these moments, lips are for tracing pathways that fingers can’t reach, voices are for conveying a language of appreciative murmurs and hitched breaths, a litany of small pleasures. Words are for ideas, and realities, and making everything real. But they have no place in tracing the lines of each other’s palms, or following along the path of the soft hair that trails over Michael’s abs, grows thick again around his cock. They have no bearing on the way that Michael’s fingers can slot into the grooves between each of Alex’s ribs, or the scratchy sound of their jawbones brushing together as they exchange sweet kisses that are made sweeter for the sharp scrape of each other’s stubble.

Michael’s curls defy words, and so does the way he runs his hand down each of Alex’s legs, presses gentle kisses to the line of suture scars, asking permission with his eyes. It’s permission Alex grants, because Michael is the only person whose been in his bed both before and after, and Alex needs to know that Michael will see the differences and not treat him differently for it. Michael there with the blanket pooled around his waist, his hand brushing the leg hairs on Alex’s left calf while his lips press against the scars on the right… that’s part of the evidence that Alex needs to know once again that Michael sees his disability, and sees him as whole nonetheless. 

And when Michael kisses his way up Alex’s body, then helps Alex balance as he rolls them over so he’s straddling Michael’s chest, knees bracketing his ribs so he can be the one to press Michael down into the pillows with kisses and scrapes of his teeth that make Michael writhe and moan, words would be an intrusion. 

They definitely don’t need words when Michael gives him a devilish grin and bends his head forward to lick the tip of Alex’s one-more-erect cock. His satisfied moans then as Alex feeds him his cock, bracing himself on the headboard is communication enough in that moment. If it weren’t, Michael’s hand furiously working his own cock while two of his fingers hook into Alex’s mouth, sliding over his tongue, giving Alex something to suck on at the same time that Michael is sucking him off is a prose poem they write with their bodies. There’s hardly anything left when either of them come for a third time, sweat slicking both their bodies with the effort. Alex rolls off Michael, rests his head on Michael’s shoulder, where he promptly falls into the embrace of dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title is from Sting's "Fortress Around Your Heart"
> 
> Under the ruins of a walled city  
> Crumbling towers in beams of yellow light.  
> No flags of truce, no cries of pity;  
> The siege guns had been pounding through the night.  
> It took a day to build the city.  
> We walked through its streets in the afternoon.  
> As I returned across the fields I'd known,  
> I recognized the walls that I once made.  
> Had to stop in my tracks for fear of walking on the mines I'd laid.
> 
> And if I've built this fortress around your heart,  
> Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire,  
> Then let me build a bridge, for I cannot fill the chasm,  
> And let me set the battlements on fire."


	8. I Just Don't Get It As Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning after relationship discussions, coffee, and a need for showers.

He wakes up with Michael’s hair tickling his nose. A glance at the clock tell him its just a few minutes after eight, and day has definitely broken outside. He shifts gingerly in the bed, trying not to wake Michael as he peels his arm away where their bodies have been pressed together, thankfully stuck just with sweat and bare skin, not other bodily fluids. He finds a pair of knit sleep pants, pulls them on while seated and makes sure that the right leg is securely knotted out of the way before he grabs for the crutch beside the door and levers himself up, makes his way to the kitchen. He’s sore in places he’s not used to, both from the sex and sleeping at odd angles. It’s not exactly unpleasant, but it’s enough of a twinge that he pops a couple of ibuprofen and chases them down with a glass of water. He’s definitely dehydrated, if nothing else. For excellent reasons though.

He starts his Keurig, gets a cup made for himself, starts one for Michael as well. While it’s brewing, he pours him a glass of water for good measure. He sends a few messages to his staff letting them know he won’t be on base until afternoon at least, sets the second steaming mug next to the water, and is perusing the contents of his fridge (which are admittedly limited because he’d planned on doing his grocery shopping tomorrow, in preparation for the weekend), when Michael appears in the kitchen doorway wearing just his jeans, looking rumpled and mouth-wateringly attractive.

“Morning,” Alex says.

“Hey.” Michael replies. “We uh…we okay?”

Nerves twist through Alex suddenly. Why wouldn’t they be? What has he missed? And then it hit him that Michael probably isn’t used to waking up in other people’s beds alone. He probably doesn’t stay the night often, and if he does, he doesn’t stick around too long once the sun is up. It’s possible he’s asking because for all the experience he has, this is maybe less familiar to him than it is to Alex.

“More than okay.” Alex lets the fridge swing closed again, crosses the kitchen toward Michael, who watches him come closer, stop a foot or two away.

“Can I...” Michael stumbles of his words, starts again. “Can I kiss you?”

“I’d like that,” Alex grins at him, sees the relief in his expression. And yeah, over the years, they’ve each had cause to feel nervous when it comes to mornings after. But the only way past that is to forge ahead, so Alex tilts his head up for Michael’s kiss, hums appreciatively into the gentle brush of lips. It’s sweet and lovely and perfect, but he can sense Michael is holding back. “You sure that’s all you wanted?” he asks, sees a spark light in Michael’s eyes.

“You up for more?” Michael challenges him.

“Sex, probably not,” Alex says easily. “But making out with you in this kitchen has been a fantasy of mine since the day I bought the house, so…” he sets the crutch aside and boosts himself up to sit on the island countertop. “Bring it on.”

Michael doesn’t hold back this time. He kisses deep and thorough, ravishing Alex in slow-motion. Every distraction ceases to matter— aches and pains, morning breath, the coldness of the stone under his ass. The entire world pivots on the essential truth of Michael Guerin standing between his spread thighs, kissing him shirtless in his kitchen. When he pulls away, Alex can see in the clock on the microwave that nearly six minutes have disappeared. He counts it as time well spent.

“Sometimes,” he says, thumb tracing along Michael’s hip where the waistband of his jeans cuts across the hip bone, “the reality is even better than the fantasy.”

“Yeah?” Michael smiles.

“Yeah,” Alex tells him. “Also, I made you coffee.”

“Guess this means we should probably have that talk we need to have, huh?”

“Guess we probably should.” He slides back to the ground, grabs his crutch. “But I’m going to put a shirt on first.”

“Aw, now why would you go and do a cruel thing like that?” Michael teases him.

“For the same reason that I’m grabbing you a shirt too, Guerin,” he calls as he heads back to the bedroom. “Because if I’m looking at your shirtless chest the entire time, I’ll be too distracted to actually pay any attention to a conversation.” He pulls a couple of navy tshirts out of his closet, deliberately avoiding anything with an Air Force logo. He can’t imagine Michael willingly wearing one, and given how many unpleasant feelings Michael has about the military, Alex thinks it’s probably smarter to go with a plain tee instead of making him sit through what might be a pretty intense conversation with a military logo staring back at him.

Back in the kitchen, he tosses Michael the shirt, grabs his own cup of coffee, and pivots toward the living room. He takes one side of the loveseat. Michael joins him a moment later, shirt on and carrying his own coffee (it looks like any other plain navy t-shirt, but there’s an appreciative little thrill that goes through Alex at the knowledge that Michael is wearing his clothes.)

“So. To recap where we are and how we got here,” Alex begins, settling into the cushioned seat, “Yesterday, I gave you a piece of a spaceship that I’d hidden from you for… more than a year. And I thought that you- rightfully- might never speak to me again. Last night, you called me out on that, said you were done building a fortress around you heart, kissed me, we had some really epic, mind-blowing sex, where you told me you’re in this for the long haul, and this morning we’re making out in my kitchen.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming,” Michael interjects.

“No. It feels good. Really good. And I an incredibly on board with every bit of it. Just…what the hell are we doing? Are we doing this for real?”

“Far as I’m concerned.” Michael takes a sip of his coffee.

“Okay then. What does this even look like? Are we…dating? Sleeping together? Friends who have sex sometimes?

“I’d say, given last night and our previous history, that we’re definitely sleeping together. Doin’ a damn good job of it, too.” Michael flashes a dirty grin, and Alex can’t help but smirk along with him.

“The sex is definitely great.”

“That’s never been our problem though,” Michael acknowledges, rubbing his palm on his jeans. “So cards on the table. Yeah, I want to date you. Or hell, I don’t know about dating. I’m crap at dating. I’m good as sex, I’m good at one night stands, I think I’m actually pretty good when it comes to caring about people, at least if I try. I am absolute crap at taking people on dates, though, or knowing what the right romantic thing is to say or do. So when I say I want to date you… I want to be the person you tell when things are crap, be the person you turn to when you have a bad day. I want to kiss you without trying to figure out if we’re on or we’re off. I want the sex, but I want everything else too. I want it to be something that lasts. I want to tell people. I want to hold your hand in public, tell people, if you’re comfortable. Our friends, at least. I want you. And I’m hoping that you might want at least some of the same from me.”

Alex blinks at him. “I think you might have to give yourself more credit in the ‘romantic things to say’ department.” He leans in, brushes his knuckles against the inside of Guerin’s wrist, seeking to give them both the comfort of contact. “I want that too. But I think we’ve both had the feelings for a long time. So…why now? It can’t just be the spaceship piece, can it?”

“Because I’ve changed,” Michael says, looking down into his coffee mug like it holds the answers. Then he forces his eyes back up. “Or maybe we both have. I’ve been through hell. It’s been a roller coaster of a year, right? But I learned a lot. I saw a bunch of people fighting for what they believed in, fighting for the people they believed in. I did a little bit of that myself, and learned that it’s okay if the end result isn’t what you thought it would be. I was reminded that life is short, and precious, and we shouldn’t waste it by shutting out the things that matter. And you matter. This thing between us, it matters. Because through it all, I kept circling back to you.” He bites his lip. “We agreed we’re like something cosmic, and I love you, and I realized that in fighting that, I’m just making myself miserable.” 

He shrugs. “Maybe I also… started to believe that I should get to be happy. People kept telling me that. Liz, Isobel, Maria especially, even Valenti. I guess I just… stopped fighting the idea as much as I used to. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get mt life right. But I’d settle for not getting it quite so wrong. That’s what I started thinking about when we were first trying to bring Max back. That’s part of why I wanted to make it work with Maria. The idea of you and me, it scared me, Alex. It scared me how much I’d have to work through to get it right.” He glances away, nodding to himself. Alex stays quiet, watches him intently.

“But I’ve been thinking about it for awhile. Thinking about what being happy might look like, and your face kept coming up in my mind. I kept coming back to you. Sometimes while I was with Maria, and then a lot more once we put that to rest and I was on my own. And then yesterday, you brought me that piece of the spaceship, and for a minute, I felt so betrayed- that you’d had it all along and hadn’t given it to me. And then I started thinking about why you’d had it all along, and what it meant that you were giving it to me. And I realized that it’s that stupid old saying- If you love something, set it free.” His gaze is piercing now.

“You were setting me free. Because you love me. Letting me go, because you loved me enough to risk losing me forever if was what I needed. You’ve been doing that for the past year. And if you could take a risk that big and admit it that way, so could I.”

“I’ve loved you for a long time,” Alex tells him.

“Same. Right back at you. But maybe now, we get to love each other at the right time too.”

Alex has to kiss him then, leaning in, brushing their lips together, trying to convey the nervousness, warmth, and fluttering joy he’s feeling. 

“Yes. Yes, I want that.” 

Michael slides his hand down from his shoulder until he’s holding Alex’s hand.

“I love seeing you smile.” He grins, shaking his head wonderingly. “Hell, I love you.” He bites his lip “Is it too soon to say that? It feels like it’s supposed to be too soon, but it’s also been more than a decade.”

“I love you too,” Alex admits, and it feels so freeing to say it, to mean it about the present moment. “So…not to soon? But also…this train is moving kind of fast and it’s kind of terrifying?”

“You want to slow it down?” Michael asks.

“No. Maybe I should, but I don’t want that,” Alex tells him. I just…want to make sure the track’s laid in front of us and that the brakes work if we need them.”

“Good metaphor,” Michael grins. “What’s it mean? You know, in practical terms.”

Alex takes a deep breath.

“Okay, so this is kind of a big thing to propose when we’ve gone on zero official dates and haven’t told our friends anything, but we’ve kind of always done things all out of order.”

“Our timeline is pretty jacked up,” Michael agrees.

“I think we should go to counseling. Together. Like couple’s counseling.” Alex holds his breath, waiting for Michael’s response.

“Maybe,” he says finally. “Isn’t is expensive?”

“It is, but I’m pretty sure I can find a way to afford it.You’d really be willing to go?”

Michael frowns, shifts uncomfortably in his seat..

“Yeah. It’s probably a good idea. We don’t exactly have normal couple problems about like…who takes out the recycling and all that. So if I step back and look at everything, we’ve got a lot stacked against us. I mean, the first time we slept together, your Dad went after us with a hammer, we’ve had our own issues on top of it ever since, we’ve taken our anger out on each other too often for a decade, you were there with me the day my Mom died ten minutes after I found out she was alive in the first place, I still have a shit ton of anger about how the men in your family treated her- treated all of them— and it’s still hard to separate that out sometimes, and I just spent the better part of the last year dating your best friend, and we both dealt with some really fucked-up examples of relationships when we were kids. We shouldn’t work. But I still feel all of this…everything around you, and I want it to work. I want ti to be good.” He huffs out a frustrated breath.

“One of the things I learned when I was dating Maria is…I don’t know what a happy relationship is supposed to look like, or feel like. Not really. Like, I know some parts of it? I know more now than I did the last time we really talked. But some things that seem good and normal to most people make me antsy, make we want to blow up the good things in my life. And like…I know what that feels like now? Enough to maybe identify it if it’s happening again? But… the reasons we’ve never made this work, it’s not just bad timing or being in different places. It’s that we haven’t known how to be in the same place. So we could probably use a little bit of help with that.”

He picks at a spot on his jeans. “I’m…trying to be better about asking for help in general.” He grimaces. “Maria pushed me on that, but… a lot of it has been Liz. Seeing how she’s been there to help people, but how much hurt she’s dealt with because people weren’t willing to ask for it in the first place. Max dying, Rosa falling off the wagon, some of the shit that Isobel’s been going through…I don’t want to hurt the people around me because I’m too stubborn to accept help. So yeah. Counseling. Um, I thought a lot about it, after that night during the snowstorm. That that’s the kind of help I should accept.” He hugs his jean-clad knee to his chest with his free arm, bare foot braced on the loveseat cushion, looking suddenly young and vulnerable. “But I still don’t like taking handouts. So it doesn’t feel right just having you pay for it.”

“You’re a genius engineer, and I’m a cryptology expert,” Alex says sagely. I bet that together, we can put together a spreadsheet that filters out essential living costs and lets us figure out a way to pay the same proportion of our disposable income toward it.”

“That’s…smart.” Michael blinks. It feels strange to have moved such a big potential obstacle out of the way. Alex thinks they might be feeling the same way about that.

“I have my moments.” Alex says wryly. “But is that going to be a thing other times? Like if we grab breakfast at the Crashdown later on this morning, and I want to pay, is that going to make you feel uncomfortable?”

Michael thinks about it a little bit. 

“Always a little bit, yeah. But I think it would be ok as long as if I ever tell you I want to get it, you don’t push back on it? Like…I try not to get my hackles up, and you don’t treat me like I don’t know my own limits?”

“That sounds fair. This is good, you know?” Alex can’t keep from smiling all the way up through his eyes. “Working through stuff like this? Learning how to actually be with each other, not just want it?”

“Yeah. It is.” Michael’s thumb traces idle patterns over his fingers. “So is this it? Are we actually dating now?”

“Yeah. Yeah we are.” Alex is grinning again.

“Can I call you my boyfriend?” Michael is grinning too, looking endearingly hopeful.

“Yes,” Alex laughs.

“Oh good. In that case, can I kiss my boyfriend?” He tugs on Alex’s hand, and Alex goes willingly, swinging his leg over Michael’s lap and sort of tumbling into a position where he’s straddling Michael, steadied by his hands and laughing as he kisses Michael several times.

“I like this,” Alex tells him, resting their foreheads together, fingers toying with Michael’s curls. One of Michael’s hands is on his ass, the other brushing through his hair, but there’s no urgency, just kisses that make him ache with how sweet they are, that take his breath away in the moments between “I’ve wanted this for a long time. Wanted you.”

It’s at that moment that Michael’s stomach lets out a very loud, very insistent growl that sends them dissolving into peals of laughter. 

“Didn’t you say something about breakfast at the Crashdown?” Michael asks, his hand skimming down Alex’s spine. “Any chance of that being a real plan?”

“Mmm,” Alex agrees, sitting back, but not moving out of Michael’s lap. “Eggs. Toast. Hashbrowns. Better coffee. I second the motion. One slight problem though.” He wrinkles his nose. “Neither one of us is any state to go out in public.”

“Best thing about these curls,” Michael disagrees, “Is that they always look like I just rolled out of bed, so no one knows if I actually did.”

“Mmmhmm.” Alex says. “I want to be clear that I find you ridiculously attractive no matter what, but…” He brushes his thumb over the stretch of skin where the shirt he’s lent Michael has ridden up. “I’m not sure if it’s mine or yours, but there’s dried jizz flaking off your abs, and we both smell like sex. We definitely each need a shower before we go anywhere.”

“Point taken,” Michael says easily. “Wanna shower together?” The innuendo is clear in Michael’s tone. Alex bites his lip though, and Michael’s expression instantly flashes to one of concern. “ Hey hey hey. What’s wrong?” he asks. “Did I…”

“No. No, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Alex reassures him, rubbing his hand carefully on Michael’s shoulder. “It’s just, I haven’t…since I was injured. It’s one of the things that’s the most different. The prosthesis, it’s water resistant, but it’s not designed for showering. I have to leave it off when I shower, so I tend to have to sit, which is… not a thing most people are used to. It’s…not exactly sexy.”

Michael’s expression becomes exaggeratedly skeptical.

“Okay, first, I’m not sure that there’s a scenario where you naked and dripping wet wouldn’t be attractive to me. I would possibly have to be dead. Second, you’re definitely allowed to have whatever hangups you have, but… you aren’t wearing your prosthesis right now, and you weren’t wearing it last night, and … definitely find you attractive as fuck. What version of your leg you’re wearing or aren’t doesn’t really inform that.” He rests his hands on Alex’s thighs, reassuring. “So I feel like maybe it’s something else too? Like…not wanting to feel vulnerable or something? Which…totally valid, not judging. I’ve got my own hangups there. Not too proud to admit it, but I’m definitely not looking to spell them out, either. But if it’s that you’re worried about me and what I’ll think, I’ll just let you know that I have a couple of fantasies involving you and soap suds, and they’re very nonspecific as to positioning. Standing, sitting, on my knees, I’m flexible. So if you want to give it a go, I’m down for that. And if we do, and it’s not working for you, kick me out and we’ll finish cleaning up on our own. If you’re not interested, I respect that and I’ll grab a separate shower.”

The idea of Michael under the spray with him…it’s an intimacy he’s wanted since they were teenagers. It’s a fantasy he’s had since before they’d even kissed, back when he knew Michael was staying in the shed and he’d imagined all the thing he could do if his Dad took a business trip and left him alone in the house for a few days— how he could sneak Michael in, cook them a meal, watch TV together. Kiss. Lose his virginity. Shower together afterward. Now all of those things- the intimacies and that he’d fantasized about are on the table, all things they can choose to do anytime, not just in stolen moments that existed only in his imagination. But this…

“I…don’t know. It’s different.” He shakes his head. “On my own it’s fine. But with someone else there…I don’t know. Let’s maybe…save it for another time?”

“Yeah, whatever you need,” Michael says easily. Alex can tell he means it too. He’s overwhelmed by the rush of love and appreciation he feels for such a simple response, the ease with which Michael accepts it and doesn’t let it be awkward. “Your house, you want first shower?” Michael continues.

“Sure.” Alex grabs the crutch so he can stand, presses another quick kiss to Michael’s lips before getting up. Back in the bedroom, he plugs the pump for his prosthesis in to charge, sets everything up the way he normally does, the way he hadn’t in their haste last night. Michael comes to the door of the bedroom as he’s heading into the bathroom.

“Just wanted to grab my clothes and all,” he explains, seeing that Alex isn’t in the shower yet.

“Makes sense.” Alex grins at him, closes the door behind him. He takes in the sight of the bathroom, remodeled basically the second he’d bought the house, because staying at the hunting cabin had very clearly illustrated the limitations of non-accessible bathrooms. He strips off his clothes, still assessing. With a critical eye, he can see the things he wouldn’t have done if he hadn’t needed to, like the teakwood bench that’s subtly anchored to the wall, or the shower handle, soap dish, and other accents that are blocked and reinforced behind the tile to double as grab bars. But his remodeler had been savvy and had a good eye for design. Nothing looks like the shower chairs he’d had to use at rehab, nothing looks medical grade, even though it is. 

He wishes he didn’t feel any discomfort. Most times, he’s fine with the new normal. It’s just that showering is the time when he’s most aware of the physical changes in his life, least able to move freely. He’s not sure he’s ready for Michael to see that. But at the same time…Michael has never treated him like he lost something when he lost part of a limb. Maybe it would be okay… And maybe he doesn’t want to cede any part of his life to this particular fear.

The water is on by now, getting up to temperature, but he hasn’t gotten under the spray yet. Instead, settled into a new certainty, secure in a sense of confidence he hadn’t been willing to entertain only a few minutes before, he moves back to the door and opens it. 

Michael’s eyes go wide with surprise that quickly transitions to overt appreciation at the sight of Alex standing there, fully nude and fiercely proud, leaning on his crutch, the toes of his remaining foot curling a little on the cold tile.

“I changed my mind,” he says succinctly. “Want to join me?” Michael drops the clothes he’s holding on the bed, stalks forward like some kind of big cat, undoing his jeans as he goes. He crushes his lips to Alex’s, a controlled storm where he’s careful not to cause Alex to overbalance.

“Hell yes,” Michael practically growls against his mouth, pulls back to shove his jeans down, step out of them, and toss them back to the bed. “What made you change your mind?”

“I decided that this being different than the way I imagined it was a stupid reason not to do something I’ve wanted for years.”

“Years, huh?” Michae strokes his thumb across Alex’s cheek, holds him steady for another kiss that’s like a long drink of water.

Alex nods, presses a kiss to Michael’s palm before turning away, glancing over his shoulder. He’s gratified to see the way Guerin’s eyes drop to look at his ass. He knows he’s still got a great ass. He steps into the shower, sets the crutch aside and switches to using the grab bars to balance. Hot water sluices over his body, and he guesses it’s a look that Michael likes, because even over the sound of the water, he can hear an appreciative moan.

“Do you have any idea how hot you look right now?” Michael asks him. His response is to flex his shoulders, pushing back against the soap holders that are designed to take his entire weight, making the muscles in his back shift.

“Why don’t you come over here and tell me?” And then Michael is behind him, arms snaking around his waist, pressing a kiss behind his ear, water trickling between their bodies, making skin slick and slippery.

“You look like a fucking God, bathing under a waterfall,” Michael tells him, voice low in his ear. Alex snorts.

“Laying it on a little thick, Guerin.” Alex says.

“Disagree, Manes. This ass is definitely divine.” Michael skims his hand over Alex’s ass.

“I meant the God thing in general, given the whole one leg thing.” Alex rolls his eyes.

“Mmm. There were gods with one leg.” Michael drops a kiss on his shoulder, slides his hand up to splay across Alex’s pecs, toy with his nipples. “I know, because I’ve done my research.” He lifts is head abruptly. “Which means that I asked Max, and he told me all about, like, 3 different ones, and that’s officially more than I ever wanted to talk about my brother during shower sex.”

“That sounds like a pretty reasonable boundary,” Alex agrees. He tilts his head back, leans his shoulder a bit more into the spray. “Speaking of which, we kind of need to…shift around a bit? I usually sit when I shower, because hopping around on slick tile with water and soap all over the place is generally discouraged.” He gestures to the teak bench a few inches away, the thing he’d found that looks the least like the shower chairs he remembers his grandparents having to use, that he’d had to use himself at the VA.

“Go ahead,” Michael says, shifting to give him space. And then, a few awkward seconds, once Alex is sitting down, Michael nods to the bottle of body wash on the shelf beside him. “Mind if I lather up real quick?” he asks.

“Sure, go for it.” There’s something precious and intimate in watching someone wash themselves, when they’re deliberately allowing you into that private moment. He tries not to let himself stare too much as Michael starts soaping up his body. It’s not long though before he realizes that Michael isn’t just letting him see. He’s putting on a show. An erotic, staggeringly intimate show of touching himself, trailing soap suds down every sharp angle of bone and rounded curve of muscle. Alex is spellbound, still transfixed as Michael steps back under the shower spray, glistening waves of water chasing the suds down his body and toward the drain. And then he’s stepping out of the spray, kneeling down in front of Alex and nuzzling at Alex’s cock, half-erect like his own. Alex reaches up and flips the lever that directs the bulk of the water pressure to the second shower head, the one that’s mounted lower on a flexible hose so Alex can reach it from the bench. Hot water rains down over both of them as Michael takes him in his mouth. Alex doesn’t try to suppress his moan. It echos on the tile walls of the small room.

“You know there’s no way I can come again right now, right?” he checks in, rolling his neck appreciatively. “It’s only been a few hours since you got me to come three times in a single night. I’d need a few more hours yet.” He lets is hand roam encouragingly over Michael’s shoulder, the back of Guerin’s neck as he points this out though.

“Not trying to make you come.” Michael noses at the nest of dark hair that frames the root of his cock. “Just want to make you feel good. Want you to be able to relax and enjoy it.”

So Alex does. He’s awash in sensation-a thousand individual drops of water on his face as he tilts his head back out of the spray, the pleasurable slide of Michael’s mouth on him, the sensation of Michael’s muscles shifting and flexing under his hand, the streams of water that collect in Michael’s hair and run in fast-paced rivulets onto his thighs and down his legs. The heat of the shower contrasts with the cold tile behind him, the sounds of the spray become like white noise so that he starts to lose track of time, drift on those waves of pleasure. He’s not going to come from this, not after the exertions of the last several hours. But it feels revelatory to let arousal meander like this, not feel the frantic press of limited time, not pull the most out of every minute they’re together, scrambling against the knowledge that their moments are perpetually coming to an end.

Michael pulls back, wraps his hand around Alex’s length for a moment instead, pumps him lazily while he chases water droplets along Alex’s thighs, laps them from his skin. When he tilts his face up for a kiss, Alex grants it to him immediately, lips dragging and clinging as Alex shields him from the spray. He can taste the faintest hints of himself on Michael’s tongue again, mixed with the clear mineral taste of the water. He skates his hands over water-slicked skin, combs his fingers through Guerin’s wet hair, watches his limbs go rag-doll loose at the touch as he rolls his head into it.

.Alex watches water droplets spatter on his face, breaking into even smaller droplets where they strike his nose, his cheeks, his eyelids. It feels like an unspeakable privilege, seeing Michael like this. Alex tips his head back up, brings him out of it by wiping the water from his eyes, brushing it from his lips. Michael’s tongue darts out to catch his thumb, follows with a scrape of his teeth that hits at one of lesser-explored kinks. Michael smirks knowingly. Of course he’s figured out that Alex has a little bit of a thing for teeth, for biting. There are fireworks going off in the back of his brain as he realizes that since they’re really doing this, Michael following up on a realization like that is something he can actually look forward to. Can actually ask for.

Michael climbs back to his feet, wincing a little as his knees shift on the tile— kneeling there can’t be comfortable in the slightest. Alex watches him, not entirely able to predict his next move, but willing to see where he wants to take this. He’s enjoying himself, the things that had made him nervous haven’t actually come to pass. This is working, and he feels freed from something he hadn’t even really realized he was still carrying. Still, he’s not predicting that Michael will sit on the bench beside him, reach for the sponge on the shelf- another cleverly mounted grab bar- and hold it under the water until it softens. He squirts a little body wash onto the sponge, works up a lather and shifts so that he’s sitting sideways on the bench, one leg tucked almost beneath him as the scent of sandalwood, cedar, and evergreen floods the air again.

“Shift this way a little bit,” he instructs, his hand gentle on Alex’s shoulder, urging him to turn so Michael can reach his back. “Told you I have some fantasies about this, right?” his voice is low and downright sultry in Alex’s ear. “I actually have a lot of fantasies about you wet and in various states of undress.” And oh, Alex hadn’t expected a conversation in this. But when Michael works up to a decision to talk, he’d just keep going. Alex has been baffled so often at how people who don’t know him all that well think Michael Guerin in taciturn. Michael can be almost distressingly good with words when he wants to be.

“They range, “Michael continues, “from ‘just went swimming’ to that movie where the two people are laying there on the beach and kissing while the waves break on top of them, and have, over the course of my life, involved pretty much every body of water larger than a mud puddle. There’s a pretty good series involving you being caught in a rainstorm and showing up at my airstream needing to be stripped out of your wet clothes and warmed by an equally naked yours truly to prevent hypothermia— I blame that Voyage of the Mimi thing they made us watch in the 6th grade for that particular fantasy, and also, in retrospect, for the belated realization that I was not, in fact, straight.” He grins.

And there’s always been this part of me that wanted to get naked with you in a shower. Hot water, steam, artistic soap suds…you letting me wash your back…so this is very much a dream coming true right now.” Alex lets his eyes drift closed for a second as Michael sets the sponge on his back and begins to move it in steady, confident strokes.

“I used to think about it too,” Alex confesses. “Used to imagine a place where it would be safe to have you over, kiss you, shower with you.”

“I used to think about showers a lot,” Michael says. “Wasn’t always easy figuring out where my next one was coming from. So the idea of having somewhere safe….” He slides the hand with the sponge around Alex’s rib cage, shifts closer to he has the reach to bring the sponge around to lather up Alex’s abs, his ribs, his pecs, trail it over his shoulders and wash his arms. “Where I could not just rely on privacy and safety, but also know that I could be there with you… That was almost my ultimate fantasy. Kinda wish I could tell my 17, 18 year old self that the fantasy comes true.” He encourages Alex to lean into him, bracing against his chest, the warmth of which feels amazing after the cold tile wall. It tickles a little when Michael skims the sudsy sponge across his belly, shifts to a raw, vulnerable intimacy when the sponge dips down between his thighs. It’s more overwhelming than he could have imagined, someone else touching him here in this way- not clinical, but not expressly sexual. It’s sensual, he realizes. Something that he’s never gotten very much of, for all that he buys himself nice-smelling soap and good bath sponges now, sleeps on linen sheets that he’d impulsively bought in an online sale (and anyone who wants him to give them up will have to pry them from his cold, dead hands). He’s started choosing things he likes in his home, not just what’s serviceable. Or what’s stylish. He likes his Air Force mugs, and he likes the hand-thrown mugs he bought from Maria’s artist friend. But there haven’t been a lot of opportunities in his life for sensual touch. He’s used to seeing to his own needs, or looking out for someone else. Someone else looking out for him is a little novel. Hard to relax into, but…good. Really good.

He’s just starting to settle into the feeling when Michael shifts him back, slips down to crouch in front of him again, dragging the sponge down his leg, washing him from hip to knee, tickling the back of his knee and then further down to wash his calf and shin and ankle, glide over his foot and all the delicate bones there. And then Michal moves back up to his other hip, moves down again in the same way- hip to knee, back of the knee, and then his residual limb. Michael’s touched his leg there before, when they’ve been in bed together— did it again just last night. This feels just enough different to be nerve-wracking though. There are no blankets to throw over the stump if either of them are uncomfortable, no hiding or shifting to make it any less obvious. This is a place where Alex still feels vulnerabilities that he no longer feels in other parts of his day-to-day. This is a moment where things could go wrong, where a hesitation from Michael, no matter how understandable, might make him feel some pain he was hoping to avoid. He braces himself for that to happen, to feel his reactions and let them go. And then it just…doesn’t happen. Michael doesn’t hesitate, Alex isn’t hit with a wave of emotions to sort though. Instead, everything is entirely fine, Michael washes the residual with the same care and pressure and pace as he’d shown for Alex’s full limb— not shying away from it, not lingering overlong. He stands again, rinses the sponge. 

“Shampoo?” he asks. And Alex can definitely wash his own hair, but it might be fun to let Michael do this for him too…and possibly he can reciprocate and wash Michael’s hair in turn. He really wants to see the expressions Michael would make.

“Sure,” he says. “Red bottle.”

It does feel good to have Michael rubbing shampoo into his hair, scrubbing it through, blunt nails sending so many wonderful inputs into his brain, a blended chord of pleasurable sparks that overwhelms his senses in the best way. He holds onto Michael’s hip, tries to communicate his appreciation in the way his own fingertips brace and press into Michael’s skin. It’s another kind of blissful sensation when Michael takes the handheld shower head and starts rinsing his hair, rinsing the rest of him, heat cascading over him wherever the water is directed. Alex kisses him, wherever he can reach- his wrist, his belly, where he shows his appreciation for Michael’s abs, the cut of his hip that slopes down toward his cock while Michael rubs conditioner into his hair.

And once he’s in that vicinity, it’s really the most natural thing to take his cock in his mouth too, going slow, letting the underside of Michael’s cock glide against his tongue. He savors the way Michael’s hands clutch at his shoulders, the way his low, guttural moan echoes on the tile. He’s hard, but not so much so that Alex can’t tease him, bob his head slowly the way that he’d learned years ago drives Michael wild, letting the slickness of his precome smooth the slide of his foreskin. He’s careful with his teeth, holds Michael right at the point where there’s little chance of that so-sensitive head bumping his molars, where he can flex his tongue and the tiniest movement makes Michael forget how to breathe. He’s always loved the reactions Michael gives when he blows him like that, or when he employs his other favorite trick that he indulges in now as well—letting Michael slip free of his mouth so he can lap at the head of his cock, deftly collecting the taste of him on his tongue and tugging at the foreskin ever so slightly with his lips, looking up and meeting Michael’s eyes while he does it…before changing it up and deliberately taking Michael back into his mouth, eyes locked on his lover’s the entire time.

“Fuck!” Michael breathes out, head tilting back before refocusing. “Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. You’re so good at that.” His thumb brushes against Alex’s cheek, runs along his own length there. “If I could come again right now, I would. Holy shit, the things you do to me, Alex.”

Alex eases off of him and grins. “Well,” he says, pulling him down for a deep, lush kiss, “There’s always next time.”

“Yes.” They grin stupidly at each other at the prospect of next time, a promise instead of a nebulous, unvoiced hope.

“For right now,” Alex goes on, “can I wash your hair?”

“Hell yes,” Michael answers promptly, glances around the shower. “Where do you want me?”

“Ummm… here beside me? Kind of…turned to face me?” It’s a slightly more difficult angle, but he wants to see Michael’s expressions. That’s half the appeal, after all. He’s all the more pleased with his decision once he gets the shampoo in his hands and sinks his hands into Michael’s hair, working up a lather. He loves the way that Michael’s face goes soft and open, lips parting and tension bleeding away the second his hair is touched. He wonders how long Michael could stay blissed out with someone toying with his hair. Alex imagines they could put on a movie, have Michael lay his head down in Alex’s lap while Alex stroked and played with his hair, and Michael would stay like that the entire film, not even realizing the credits were rolling until the TV was shut off. He’d just get lost in it, the way he’s doing here. He sways, eyes closed, his head tilting heavy into Alex’s hands.

Alex rinses his hair, being more thorough than necessary to give Michael more blissful sensation. Then he stands, bracing his knee carefully on the bench and reaches for the conditioner. He lets Michael’s forehead rest against his belly while he works conditioner through Michael’s hair for several long minutes, massaging his scalp, combing it through his curls, gently detangling any knots he finds with deft, tender motions. It’s rare, he thinks, for Michael to ever let go of tension and responsibility, even when he chafes against it. Alex wants to give him as much respite as possible, even if it’s just a few minutes like this at a time. He rinses Michael’s hair again, and then his own, sets the shower head back in its stand and tips Michael’s chin upward.

“Hey there,” he says softly, and Michael blinks.

“ ‘S nice,” he says. Alex is filled with a wash of love, another cresting wave of the emotion that has been on the tip of his tongue since Michael kissed him again last night. He’s never stopped feeling it, never not been in love with Michael Guerin since the first time the kissed in the museum. Since maybe before that, before their lips had ever touched. Not the day he’d offered Michael a place to stay…but maybe from the day he’d realized Michael had accepted it and he had felt hope and satisfaction kindle in his chest. Michael blinks again, looks more clear eyed. “Nice that your shower never seems to run out of hot water.”

Alex chuckles.

“On-demand water heater. The house came with it. Previous owners did a lot of renovations. I can honestly say that while I’ve appreciated it before, this is the first time I’ve appreciated it for quite this reason.”

“Glad to be of service.”

“Oh, you’re more than of service, Guerin. You know that.”

Michael runs his hands up Alex’s sides as he stands comes in for a kiss.

“You might be one of the only people who thinks so,” he says.

“They don’t know you like I do, then. They don’t love you like I do.” Alex watches Michael’s face for any hint of discomfort at those words dropped casually into conversation. It doesn’t come though. Michael just ducks his head and grins- soft and pleased and almost bashful. He shivers as a chill runs through him, feels the goose pimples rising on Michael’s arms. “Towels are on the rack.” He nods and Michael walks over to grab them, dripping water. Alex follows more slowly, reacquiring his crutch and moving carefully, using as many solid points to brace as he can because of how slippery the floor can get, even with the fan going. Michael towels off his hair, his arms, rubs it across his chest before wrapping it around his waist and handing Alex his own towel. Alex heads to the bedroom to dry off— it’s a lot easier sitting on the bed than trying to stand in the bathroom. Michael follows him, stripping the towel off in the sunlight streaming through the sliding glass doors and, unabashedly nude, rubs at his hair again. Alex can’t help but smile. He leans back a bit, bracing himself on his arms to watch the show.

“What?” Michael asks when he finally notices, emerging from the towel.

“Nothing.” Alex knows he’s smirking, but he can’t help it. “Just enjoying the view.”

“Enjoy away.” That’s said in the kind of flippant tone that Alex knows Michael uses to cover his rawer emotions. It’s not the one where he’s hiding something negative though. This is the one he uses to cover up when he’s not sure he wants to reveal how much he likes something. So when Michael steps closer to grab his jeans- steps into them commando (and now Alex is going to spend a lot more of his life wondering how often Michael is only wearing a a layer of worn denim right against his skin) he curls his hand around Michael’s forearm, tugs him onto the bed.

“I intend to,” Alex promises him solemnly. “Every chance I get.” He kisses Michael then, or Michael kisses him, and it’s still electric, even though it’s lingering and practically chaste in comparison to most other embraces they’ve shared. It feels comfortable- more comfortable, more settled than any new relationship kiss has a right to. It’s almost unsettling how settled, how comfortable this feels. It’s that feeling that prompts Alex to bring up something he’s been coming back to for the last 12 hours or so. “Hey. Does it seem strange to you, the way this is all…coming together so fast? Like…I’m not the only one who feels like this is bizarrely comfortable right out of the gate, right?”

“You’re not,” Michael tells him. He reaches out to stroke his hand up and down Alex’s bicep, like he can’t stand to be this close and not be touching. Honestly, Alex feels it too. “But it’s also not right out the gate, right? It’s eleven years of false starts and figuring it out, learning what doesn’t work. It’s a lot of time soul searching, deciding what we want. And then it’s deciding, after all this time, that we’re just going to have to go for it. Stop worrying about what doesn’t work, and start figuring out how to make it work. We had our first date eleven years ago, and also never. I don’t really think we should try to fit the mold of what relationships are supposed to be like at various timestamps. We don’t fit like that. We’ve done a lot of this out of order, so it’s basically like we’re time traveling, right? First kiss then, first date…in the future?” He laughs. “Definitely got the meeting the parents part wrong on all counts.” It’s a good thing the dark humor works for them. “Good news is, time travel is not the weirdest thing we’ve encountered so far.”

“Not by a long shot,” Alex agrees. They should be getting dressed, but he leans his head on Michael’s shoulder, wet hair and all. “The weirdest thing is definitely you trying to get red chile sauce on a burger. Drips all over the place.”

“Bullshit, Manes,” Michael says without any heat. “Christmas, all the way. I like all the types of chile sauce. Both is good. It’s kind of on brand for me.” Michael’s stomach lets out a low rumble at that, and they both start laughing.

“Hurry up and get dressed.” He drops a kiss into Alex’s wet hair, his own curls still leaving a drip or two of water on his own shoulder. “You promised me breakfast.”

Alex nods and reaches for his crutch so he can dig through his dresser for pants. He makes it all the way to the dresser before he realizes that Michael hasn’t moved. He looks over, arches a brow.

“What?” Michael feigns innocence. “It’s my turn to enjoy.” And really, the only response to that is for Alex to unwind his towel from his waist and toss it to the foot of the bed. Give the people what they want and all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title is from Dierks Bentley's "Burning Man"
> 
> This is a song that I encountered through its placement on the shrowunner's spotify playlists for both Michael and Max, and I have to say, I'm a fan. I love the idea that you don't fix yourself all at once, you're not expecting perfection. That the goal is to not fall into the mistakes as easily, to climb out of them a little bit sooner.
> 
> Lyrics excerpt:  
> "I always loved the highway  
> I just don't run it as fast  
> I still go wherever the wind blows me  
> But I always find my way back  
> I still don't get it right sometimes  
> I just don't get it as wrong  
> I still go a little bit crazy sometimes  
> Yeah, but now I don't stay near as long"


	9. Can I Call You My Boyfriend Yet?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Michael take their relationship out for a spin at the Crashdown, with the intent of maybe telling Liz.

It actually takes less than half an hour for them to be dressed and out the door. Alex suggests that they take one car, and then asks Michael if he wants to drive.

Michael pretty much always prefers his truck and his driving. Alex knows from a year of friendship and working together, from the whole time he’s been back in Roswell, really, that that fact hasn’t changed since high school. He doesn’t mind though. There’s something about how at ease Michael is behind the wheel that makes it easier to cede this to him. As he climbs into the passenger side of the truck, he smiles to himself, thinks that his men would probably be surprised that Captain Manes, who eschews a driver whenever he can and drives himself whenever possible, would suggest someone else being in the driver’s seat, let alone how readily he lets his friends drive him places. More than half the time he, Liz, and Maria go anywhere, Liz or Maria drive. He even lets Kyle drive sometimes, and that’s definitely not any kind of nostalgia from their high school days factoring in, given how the fifteen years or so between being 13 and being adults hadn’t had them on the best of terms.

With Michael, there’s definitely some heavy nostalgia factor. He has a fair number of fond memories of this truck. He kind of loves that Michael still has it, still keeps it running. It’s a sappy thought, but he likes that Michael values things from the past, sees the promise in old things. He hopes that’s a good omen for there being a future for them. It’s a throwback to be sure- Michael driving, Alex riding on the passenger side, elbow propped in the window with his fingertips braced against the top of it while the sun spills into the cab, hot on his skin. And like everything else, it feels oddly right to be here again on entirely new footing.

Inside the Crashdown, Liz is behind the counter taking orders. There are two stools free at the end of the bar, and with a quick glance toward Michael to make sure it works for him too, Alex snags them. Liz, ever on her A game is in front of them before they can even finish getting seated.

“Hey!” she says brightly, a genuine smile on her face. “Good to see you guys! What can I get started for you?”

He doesn’t even have to ask for coffee, because she already has the pot in hand and has flipped his mug over to pour. She glances at Michael, who nods for the same.

“Um…how about a U-F-Omlette.” He sits down, doesn’t need to glance at the menu.

“Two of those,” Michael seconds. “With crashbrowns for me”

“No problem. Red or Green?” She knows the answer of course, but asks it anyway, the question automatic by now, something she asks by rote.

“Christmas,” he says, with a private little glance toward Michael, who is fully situated on his stool now, his right arm on the counter beside Alex’s left, so close they’re almost touching.

“Same,” Michael says, shifting the back of his hand somehow even closer, but leaving the option of open affection quite literally in Alex’s hands. Alex welcomes it. He’s wanted to be out with Michael Guerin, hold his hand in public for what borders on half their lives. And they’d said that telling their friends was going to part of this. Liz is probably the person they both count near the top of that list. So deliberately, he shifts his hand so he can hold Michael’s, laces their fingers together. Liz has turned to relay their order to the kitchen, and when she turns back her eyes go wide. She shoves the order pad in her pocket, her lips parted in shock.

“Wait a second.” She leans in so that he’s close enough to them her voice can’t carry very far, especially since she speaks in hushed tones. “Are you two…together?” 

Alex can’t keep himself from grinning. 

“Yeah. We are.” He glances at Michael, feels him squeeze his hand in response.

“Aye dios mio, this is amazing! I’m so happy for you two. How long have you…”

“Since last night.” Michael says matter-of-factly, but he’s unable to keep a very self-satisfied grin from spreading across his face. The obvious meaning behind that grin makes Alex blush. “You’re kind of the first person we’ve told.”

“Okay, if you don’t get up and come with me to the back office right this instant so that I can hug you both properly without causing a scene, I don’t even know what to threaten you with. I can’t think mean thoughts when I’m excited.” 

Alex is already laughing and moving. He eases his grip on Michael’s hand, giving him permission to pull away if he wants. But although they slip behind the counter close enough that most people wouldn’t be able to see, Michael never drops his hand- not until they’re all in the back office and Liz is pulling them both into a hug together, her alien antenna threatening to bop each of them in the forehead.

“I’m seriously so happy for you both,” she says into their shoulders. “I know how long it’s been for you, how rough a road it’s been. I’m so, so glad you’re actually giving it a go. Though honestly, if you’d waited another two weeks, I’d have won the betting pool.

“There’s a betting pool?” Michael asks.

“And you participated?” Alex asks, even more incredulous.

“Five bucks for half the cash raised and a night of free drinks at the Pony? Hell yes I did.”

“At the Pony?” Michael’s brow furrows.

“Does Maria know?” Alex asks, figuring that’s the source of Michael’s sudden consternation. Liz fixes him with a very unimpressed look.

“Does she know? Of course she does. She’s the one who started the pool. Though Isobel definitely helped organize it.”

“How many people know?” Michael asks, and yeah, that’s Alex’s biggest, the one that’s got nerves crowding out amusement until he knows.

“Just the people who know about you three being aliens,” Liz assures.” And the people who know you used to have a thing. Which is by this point a venn diagram that’s just a circle.”

“I cannot believe that you bet money on this,” Alex tells her. He feels like he should be offended, but he really just…wants to laugh. He’s not sure how Michael feels though.

“Uh uh, nope. You don’t get to get all sanctimonious on me,” Liz retorts with teasing ferocity. “Not when you both bet on whether Max and I would make it to his house before having sex when we got him back, and definitely not after I saw you,” here, she points at Michael, “eat a tortilla chip covered in Crisco for $5 because Kyle thought you wouldn’t do it, and then offer to do it again for an additional $10.” 

“Fair point,” Michael says. “Shit was gross though. Tell you what.” He hugs Liz in tight to his side. “Buy me a drink sometime, and I’ll consider us square.”

“How about I comp both of your coffees this morning instead,” she offers.

“Deal.”

“How about you, Alex? That work for you?”

“I’m fine,” he shrugs, deeply amused as she draws him back into another hug.

“He’s more than fine,” Michael promises, “since he’s paying today, and now we get free coffee.”

“Oh! Oh my gosh! Is this a date?” Her eyes are sparkling.

“Technically speaking,” Michael says, throwing a little bit of a cowboy drawl on it that makes Alex either want to shake his head or kiss him senseless, “I think it’s our first date.”

“And here I am horning in on it!” Liz starts to pull back, but Michael pulls her in close again. He smiles at Alex over her head, his other arm a comfortable pressure along Alex’s back.

“Nah, Ortecho. We’ll let you know if that ever happens. Part of why we wanted to come by here in the first place was ‘cause we want to do this right. Want to tell our friends at least, not be hiding it. Still not a lot of people in this town I give a rat’s ass about, but…as far as friends go, you’re kind of top of the list.”

“Top of mine too,” Alex says, feels her lean into him again. “Of course, if you’ve already made a phone tree for your gambling syndicate, we could really speed up the process,” he teases. He’s joking. If they were actually going to to that way, that’s obviously what the Secret Lab group text is for.

“Out of curiosity,” Michael says, hand settling on Alex’s waist as they all pull apart, “Who did end up winning the pool?” 

“Pretty sure it’s Maria,” Liz tilts her head, considering. “She had the week before me, and the week after.”

“Well damn,” Michael says softly.

“We should tell her next,” Alex says gently. “I don’t want it to feel like we’re keeping secrets from her.”

“Yeah.” Micahel’s eyes dart toward him. “Want to go after breakfast? Thursday is delivery day, so she’s usually at the Pony by eleven.”

Alex nods.

“Hey.” Liz pulls his attention with a hand on his elbow. “For what it’s worth? I’m pretty sure she’s going to be okay with it. It’s not like she’s going to be that surprised. I mean, the official name of the betting pool was the “When Will Michael and Alex Realize They Still Love Each Other and Finally End Up Dating?” Pool.” 

That makes him smile. Trust Maria DeLuca not to shy away from things that are unconventional. And if she can face any potential awkwardness head on, so can they. They’ve already driven his highway in one direction. Might as well turn the wheel and head back the other. There’s a shout from the kitchen window, and Liz jumps.

“Oh! That’s your food!” She holds the door for them, grabs the plates as they head back to their seats. She’s flagged down again before she can even set the plates down and dashes off the second their food is in front of them with one more whispered, “Congratulations!”

“That went pretty well,” Alex says, cutting into his omelet with the side of his fork.

“Yeah, it did.” Michael digs into his own omelet. “Turns out, I kind of like telling people you’re my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend, huh?” Alex shakes his head, bemused. “I like it too, but it does seem a little bit like you going to leave a note in my locker and give me your letter to wear?” He grabs a sip of his coffee. “Sorry. Not trying to be a jerk, It’s just…I never got to call someone my boyfriend in high school, but that’s still what it sounds like. I like hearing it. But at the same time, it just feels very….well…high school. Maybe that’s fitting, seeing as that’s how far we go back.”

Michael leans closer to him.

“Listen. I’ll call you whatever you want. Boyfriend, partner, lover.” He draws the last one out suggestively. “I’ll call you my boo, or sweetie pie, my companion, or my “friend” in that way that confuses bigoted people and that society ladies say with extra inflection so you know they mean the scandalous way. Whatever you want, whatever you need. But it all means the same thing when it comes down to it. That we’re together. And if I didn’t know how much you would hate the attention, I would stand up here right now, pull you to your feet as well, and plant one on you so you know how committed to this I am.”

“We wouldn’t have to tell anyone, then,” Alex observes wryly, surprised by how much less opposed he is to that idea than he thought he would be. Still opposed, but….charmed too. “It would be all over town inside of a day.”

“I’m wounded that you underestimate my flair for the dramatic,” Michael informs him, voice dropping with mock seriousness. “There would be a dip and everything. You’d make that little noise you make when I throw you on the bed, or flip you over, or pull you down on top of me. I love that noise. It would be so romantic that everyone would know by dinnertime, tops.”

Alex can knows he’s turning red. No one else can hear them— the seat beside Michael is empty and their voices are low.

“Guerin, you have a hell of a mouth on you,” he says. 

“Sounds dirty,” Michael quips, spearing a chunk of his crashbrowns. And oh, two can definitely play at this game.

“It’s supposed to.” He says it levelly, lets his expression settle just a little bit into the in-charge mask he uses when he’s commanding his men and wants his orders followed without question. He sees the shift in Michael’s eyes when he looks up at him- the widening of his eyes, the way his lips part, the way he turns on a dime from teasing to thirsty.

“Oh, Fuck.”

Alex says nothing, just raises his eyebrows significantly, indicating that that is, in fact, the general idea.

“Do you think that the cab of my truck parked on the street is a private enough place to make out when we get back out there?” Michael asks conversationally. Alex shakes his head with regret.

“No. But if you pull it into the alley beside the Crashdown’s dumpsters, that’s probably enough.” Alex leans in conspiratorially, lets his hand rest deliberately on Michael’s thigh, shielded from view. “And if you’re very, very good through the rest of breakfast, I might even let you show me how talented that Cowboy mouth of yours is.”

“Dirty Pool, Manes, Dirty Pool.” Michael shakes his head, heat and desire still obvious in his expression. It’s a good thing no one is paying them any attention. “You’re going down.”

“No, you are,” Alex says placidly, taking a sip of his coffee and staring evenly out toward the window into the Crashdown’s kitchen. “And I thought you wanted me to get it up.”

Michael damn near chokes on his omelet.

“Everything okay?” Liz checks in unexpectedly from over Michael’s shoulder.

“Food is amazing,” Michael replies, recovering himself. “Your friend is a menace.” Her laughter peals through the half-empty diner. She leans close to top off his coffee, her hair spilling over her shoulder.

“You’re the one dating him,” she reminds him.

“Yeah.” Michael says, eyes softening so that they’re all soft and warm when he looks at Alex, sets his fork down and reaches out to skim his knuckles across the back of Alex’s hand. “Yeah, I am.”

And if this is what it feels like to be in love and have it lift you heart up instead of break it, Alex is ready to sign up for it. Quite possibly for the rest of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title is from Laura Bell Bundy's "Can I Call You My Boyfriend"
> 
> This song is always in my mind when the discussion of relationship labels comes up. And as many of us know, that conversation is a much more complex one when you're adults, and when queer identities are involved! This song always gives me a jaunty little boost when that topic comes along, and since I found myself quoting examples from it as I was writing this scene, it became the chapter title.
> 
> Lyrics Excerpt:  
> "Refer to you as my:  
> Man toy, lover boy, sweetheart that brings me joy  
> Better half, sweetie pie  
> Yes, I'm still seein' that same guy  
> No labels, no fuss, livin' in the now for us  
> Or can I call you my boyfriend?"

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Space Cowboy" by Kasey Musgraves. Lyrics included for reference
> 
> https://youtu.be/SrzmDM3rRr8
> 
> You look out the window  
> While I look at you  
> Sayin' I don't know  
> Would be like saying that the sky ain't blue  
> And boots weren't made for sitting by the door  
> Since you don't wanna stay anymore
> 
> You can have your space, cowboy  
> I ain't gonna fence you in  
> Go on ride away, in your Silverado  
> Guess I'll see you 'round again  
> I know my place, and it ain't with you  
> Well, sunsets fade, and love does too  
> Yeah, we had our day in the sun  
> When a horse wants to run, there ain't no sense in closing the gate
> 
> You can have your space, cowboy  
> After the gold rush, there ain't no reason to stay  
> Shoulda learned from the movies that good guys don't run away  
> But roads weren't made to not go down  
> And there ain't room for both of us in this town
> 
> So you can have your space, cowboy  
> I ain't gonna fence you in  
> Go on ride away, in your Silverado  
> I'll see you around again
> 
> 'Cause I know my place, and it ain't with you  
> Sunsets fade, and love does too  
> We had our day in the sun  
> When a horse wants to run, ain't no sense in closing the gate  
> So you can have your space  
> You can have your space, cowboy  
> I ain't gonna fence you in  
> Go on ride away, in your Silverado  
> I'll see you around again
> 
> 'Cause I know my place, and it ain't with you  
> Sunsets fade, and love does too  
> Oh, we had our day in the sun  
> When a horse wants to run, ain't no sense in closing the gate  
> You can have your space  
> Yeah, you can have your space  
> You can have your space  
> Cowboy


End file.
